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diff --git a/old/69857-0.txt b/old/69857-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 24045bc..0000000 --- a/old/69857-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,10002 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pride and Passion: Robert Burns, -1759-1796, by DeLancey Ferguson - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Pride and Passion: Robert Burns, 1759-1796 - -Author: DeLancey Ferguson - -Release Date: January 22, 2023 [eBook #69857] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, Carla Foust and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was - produced from images made available by the HathiTrust - Digital Library.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIDE AND PASSION: ROBERT -BURNS, 1759-1796 *** - - - - - - PRIDE AND PASSION - ROBERT BURNS 1759-1796 - - - - - PRIDE AND PASSION - - _Robert Burns_ - - 1759-1796 - - BY - - DELANCEY FERGUSON - - ‘_My great constituent elements are Pride and Passion._’ - BURNS TO AGNES M’LEHOSE - DECEMBER 28, 1787 - - - NEW YORK - OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS - 1939 - - - - - Copyright, 1939, by Oxford University Press, New York, Inc. - First Edition - - - Printed in the United States of America - - - - -PREFACE - - -All witnesses agree that Robert Burns was a vivid and dynamic -personality. All readers of his poetry concur. Yet somehow the -personality which blazes in the poems and glows in the letters only -smoulders in the biographies. Why is it so hard to write a dull -life of, say, Byron, and so easy to write a dull one of Burns? For -one thing, there are too many biographies, all following the same -stereotyped outline of dividing the poet’s life according to the places -he lived in instead of according to the things he did and thought. Then -really graphic memorabilia are scarce, especially for the formative -years in Ayrshire. People keep saying that Burns was a brilliant -talker, but they seldom report his talk. Finally, too many biographers -have worked in the wrong mood, intent on moralizing or deprecating -rather than interpreting. - -This book is not a biography, if that word connotes a narrative written -in straight time-sequence. It is, instead, my answer to the question, -subordinated or ignored by most chronological biographers, What sort -of a man was Robert Burns? I have therefore discarded time-sequence -in favour of the relationships of everyday life in which Burns -most clearly revealed his personality. The plan has at least the -advantage of passing quickly over his almost undocumented youth, and -concentrating attention upon his fully recorded manhood. The formal -biography, whether it be Mrs. Carswell’s romantic approach or Professor -Snyder’s scholarly one, suffers from the necessity of devoting more -space to the scantily reported twenty-seven years in Ayrshire than -to the five richly documented years in Dumfries. I have assumed that -Burns’s character can best be determined from the completest records. -Perhaps to himself John Syme and Maria Riddell were not so important -as Robert Muir and Margaret Chalmers, but the later friendships can be -studied at full length; the earlier ones cannot. Hence I have given -most space to the relationships in which guess-work can be kept to a -minimum. - -So, too, I have deliberately limited myself to the best authenticated -sources--Burns’s own letters and poems, and the letters and other -records of his immediate contemporaries. Unsupported oral tradition -I have avoided as basic material. Though I use such anecdotes now -and again as secondary illustrations, it is always with a warning as -to their nature. I have likewise tried to make clear the distinction -between facts and the inferences I have drawn from them. - -In one respect at least my preparation for writing about Burns is -unique. Most editors and biographers have either been bred in the -rosy mists of the Burns legend or have worked their way back to the -original records through a mass of secondary printed matter. Up to a -dozen years ago my knowledge of Burns and his times included little -beyond such reading of major works and standard criticism as one -does in preparation for the doctorate. In 1925 I undertook to edit -a reprint of Burns’s chief poems. Discovering in the course of that -job how unsatisfactory were all editions of his correspondence, I -thereupon plunged into the work of tracing and collating the original -holographs. Not until after thorough immersion in these primary sources -did I extend my studies to the letters and other records of Burns’s -contemporaries and to the Burns tradition embalmed in the biographies -and standard editions. When I started I had therefore everything to -learn, but nothing to unlearn, and my basic impression of the poet and -his work was founded on intimate acquaintance with his own words, and -not on what other people had said about him. - -The large number of new documents which have turned up in recent years -replaces conjecture with certainty in many once disputed episodes in -Burns’s career. We need no longer depend on libellous Saunders Tait for -details of William Burnes’s troubles at Lochlie; the chronology of the -poet’s Edinburgh peccadillos is fairly clear; we know why Mrs. Dunlop -broke off her correspondence. The verification and completion of the -texts of more than three-fourths of Burns’s own letters is only a part -of the fresh material. Collateral documents ranging from Elizabeth -Paton’s discharge of her claim against Burns to the almost complete -correspondence of two of his most intimate friends are now available, -and I have used them freely. I have also drawn upon other sources -not fully utilized in the past. Most biographers, for instance, have -contemned the so-called ‘Train MS.’ in Edinburgh University library. -This collection of notes on Lockhart’s _Life of Burns_ consists mainly -of anecdotes deriving ultimately from the poet’s friend, John Richmond. -It has been repudiated _in toto_ for no better reason, seemingly, than -that Richmond told a story about one Mary Campbell which does not -tally with the romantic account of Highland Mary, and was mistaken -in the identity of a lady who once called at Burns’s lodgings in -Baxter’s Close. Against these two doubtful items I set the fact that -the author of the notes so accurately described unpublished letters and -verses which he had seen that every one of them since published can be -instantly identified. I base no major conclusions on this MS., but I -can see no justification for ignoring it. - -I need not enumerate the volumes of biography, history, and memoirs -which have contributed background materials. They are listed in all the -standard bibliographies. The one great addition to the older lists is -the _Journals_ of James Boswell, which have furnished graphic details -of Scottish life. I hasten to add, however, that Chapter I is not -intended as a complete survey of eighteenth-century Scotland. Even had -completeness been possible in the space at my disposal, it would have -been useless to attempt to repeat what Professor H. W. Thompson has -so superbly done in _A Scottish Man of Feeling_. Hence I have limited -myself to those aspects of national life which bore directly upon -Burns, as I have also done in considering the influence of contemporary -literature. The eighteenth century was not all ‘elegance’, but it was -the elegant authors, and not Swift, Fielding, and Johnson, who appealed -to Burns. - -Lest British readers charitably assume that I sin through ignorance, -I ought perhaps also to add that in writing of Burns’s world I have -not hesitated to equate some of its social and political aspects with -their twentieth-century American analogues. To describe a dead world in -dead terms seems a poor way of revivifying it. My omission of footnotes -is likewise deliberate. In a score of articles in various journals -during the past decade I have presented, and fully documented, the -evidence on many controversial points. The articles evoked an almost -passionate apathy; nevertheless they, and their footnotes, are there -if anyone cares to look them up. Furthermore, nearly all the source -documents I have used are now in print, despite the efforts of Burns’s -self-appointed literary executors to suppress certain of them. On two -points I recant some of my earlier statements: I know now that the -circumstances of Burns’s quarrel with the Riddells are not so clear as -I once thought them, and Mr. Stanley Cursiter of the Scottish National -Gallery has given me reason to doubt my identification of the miniature -portrait belonging to Mr. Oliver R. Barrett. - -Transcripts of most of the unpublished documents I have used are -included in Mr. Robert T. Fitzhugh’s Cornell University dissertation, -‘Robert Burns as Seen by his Contemporaries’ (1935). I am deeply -indebted to Mr. Fitzhugh for the use of this material and of other -documents he has discovered more recently, chief among them the -letter in which Robert Ainslie described to Agnes M’Lehose his visit -to Ellisland in October, 1790. In addition to the Train MS., above -mentioned, Mr. Fitzhugh’s thesis includes numerous letters by Burns’s -contemporaries, of which the most important are the forty-one which -passed between John Syme and Alexander Cunningham from 1789 to 1797. On -publication in the _Burns Chronicle_ these letters were considerably -expurgated, the deletions including details of the Caledonian Hunt’s -revelry in Dumfries and the most graphic description which has yet come -to light in connection with Burns of a wet evening over the punchbowl. - -Many other people have helped me in the work. My wife typed most of -it in its original form, clarified doubtful points by debating them, -and did her best to restrain the wilder excesses of Ph.D. diction. -My colleague, Winfield H. Rogers, read the manuscript, and made many -useful comments. A famous British firm gave me free permission to use -one of Burns’s bawdier letters, but after I published it they were -taken to task by one of the literary executors above mentioned. Since -they found it easier to repudiate a foreigner than to face the wrath -of a compatriot, I shall not embarrass them by repeating my thanks -here. I am indebted to Col. Sir John Murray, D.S.O., for use of the -original MS. of Burns’s journal of his Border tour. Mr. Davidson Cook, -Mr. George W. Shirley, and Mr. John M’Vie have all shared their Burns -discoveries with me, and Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, Mr. Gabriel Wells, and -the late Mr. Charles Sessler renewed my obligations to them by allowing -me to collate MSS. which came into their hands after my edition of the -_Letters_ was published. And finally, I owe a still deeper renewal of -gratitude to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, to whose -grant-in-aid this present volume owes its appearance. - - DE L. F. - - _Western Reserve University - 20 August 1938_ - - - - -CHRONOLOGY OF BURNS’S LIFE - - -I. AYRSHIRE - - 1759. _Jan. 25._ Robert Burns born at Alloway; eldest son of William - Burnes (1721-1784) and his wife Agnes Broun (1732-1820). The - other children were Gilbert (1760-1827), Agnes (1762-1834), - Anabella (1764-1832), William (1767-1790), John (1769-1785), - and Isabella (1771-1858). - - 1765. Robert and Gilbert sent to school to John Murdoch. - - 1766. William Burnes rents Mt. Oliphant farm. - - 1768. Murdoch gives up Alloway school. The _Titus Andronicus_ - incident. - - 1772. Robert and Gilbert attend Dalrymple parish school, week about, - during summer quarter. - - 1773. Robert studies grammar and French with Murdoch for three weeks; - writes his first song, ‘Handsome Nell’, for Nellie Kilpatrick. - - 1774. Hard times begin at Mt. Oliphant. - - 1775. Burns attends Hugh Rodger’s school at Kirkoswald. - - 1777. At Whitsun William Burnes moves from Mt. Oliphant to Lochlie. - - 1779. Burns joins a dancing class ‘in absolute defiance’ of his - father’s commands. - - 1780. The Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club organized. - - 1781. Burns courts Alison Begbie. His father’s dispute with David - M’Lure, his landlord, begins. Burns joins the Freemasons, and - about midsummer goes to Irvine as a flax-dresser. - - 1782. _Jan. 1._ The Irvine shop burnt out; soon after, Burns returns - to Lochlie. - - _Sept. 24._ William Burnes’s dispute referred to arbiters. - - 1783. _Jan._ Burns wins a £3 prize for flax-seed. - - _April._ Burns begins his Commonplace Book. - - _May 17._ M’Lure gets a writ of sequestration against William - Burnes. - - _Aug. 18._ The ‘Oversman’ reports in Burnes’s favor. - - _Aug. 25._ Burnes makes first appeal to Court of Session. - - Autumn. Robert and Gilbert secretly arrange to rent Mossgiel. - - 1784. _Jan. 27._ The Court of Session upholds William Burnes. - - _Feb. 13._ Death of William Burnes. The family moves to - Mossgiel. - - 1785. _May 22._ Birth of Elizabeth, the poet’s daughter by Elizabeth - Paton. - - _Nov. 1._ Burial of John Burns, the poet’s youngest brother. - During this year Burns began to write his satires, composed - ‘The Jolly Beggars’, and in Oct. finished his first Commonplace - Book. He also met Jean Armour. - - 1786. _Jan._ (?). Burns plans migration to Jamaica. - - _April 3._ ‘Proposals’ for the Kilmarnock _Poems_ sent to press. - - _c. April 23._ James Armour repudiates Burns as a son-in-law. - - _May 12._ Supposed date of composing ‘The Court of Equity’. - - _May 14._ Supposed date of farewell to Highland Mary. - - _July 9._ Burns’s first penitential appearance in church. - - _July 22._ Burns transfers his share in Mossgiel to Gilbert. - - _July 30._ Burns in hiding from James Armour’s writ. - - _July 31._ The Kilmarnock _Poems_ published. - - _c. Sept. 1._ First postponement of Jamaica voyage. - - _Sept. 3._ Jean Armour bears twins, who are christened Robert - and Jean. - - _c. Sept. 27._ Second postponement of Jamaica voyage. - - _Oct. 23._ Burns dines at Catrine House. - - End of _Oct._ Abandonment of Jamaica plans. - - _Nov. 27._ Burns sets out for Edinburgh. - - _Dec. 1._ Elizabeth Paton accepts Burns’s settlement of her - claim. - - -II. EDINBURGH - - 1786. _Nov. 29._ Burns arrives in Edinburgh. - - _Dec. 9._ Henry Mackenzie praises the Kilmarnock _Poems in The - Lounger_. - - _Dec. 14._ William Creech issues subscription bills for the - Edinburgh edition of the _Poems_. - - 1787. _Jan. 13._ The Grand Lodge of Scotland toasts Burns as - ‘Caledonia’s Bard’. - - _April 21._ Edinburgh _Poems_ published. - - _April 23._ Burns sells his copyright for 100 guineas. - - _May 5-June 1._ Burns tours the Border. - - End of _May_. VOL. I of _Scots Musical Museum_ published. - - _June 2._ Burns receives Meg Cameron’s appeal. - - _June 8._ Burns’s ‘_éclatant_ return to Mauchline’. - - End of _June_. Burns tours West Highlands as far as Inverary. - - _July 29._ Jean Armour ‘in for it again’. - - _Aug. 2._ Burns completes his autobiographical letter to Dr. - John Moore. - - _Aug. 8._ Burns returns to Edinburgh. - - _Aug. 15._ Burns freed of Meg Cameron’s writ. - - _Aug. 25-Sept. 16._ Highland tour with William Nicol. - - _Oct. 4-20._ Tour in Stirlingshire. - - _Oct._ Death of poet’s daughter, Jean. - - _Nov._ Burns begins active work for the _Museum_. - - _Dec. 4._ Burns meets Agnes M’Lehose. - - _Dec. 7._ Burns dislocates his knee. - - _Dec. 8._ The Clarinda correspondence begins. - - 1788. _Jan. 4._ Burns’s first visit to Clarinda. - - _Feb. 13-14._ Peak of the Clarinda correspondence: four letters - in two days. - - _Feb. 18._ Burns leaves Edinburgh. - - _Feb. 23._ Burns returns to Mauchline; is ‘disgusted’ by Jean. - - _Feb. 27 (?)-Mar. 2._ Burns visits Ellisland with John Tennant. - - _Mar. 3._ Jean bears twin girls, of whom one dies on Mar. 10 and - the other on Mar. 22. - - _c._ _Mar. 13._ Burns returns to Edinburgh. - - _Mar. 18._ Burns signs lease of Ellisland. - - _Mar. 24._ Burns leaves Edinburgh. - - _Mar._ VOL. II of _Scots Musical Museum_ published. - - Late _April_. Burns acknowledges Jean Armour as his wife. - - _April-May._ Burns receives Excise instructions at Mauchline. - - -III. DUMFRIESSHIRE - - 1788. _June 11._ Burns settles at Ellisland. - - _July 14._ Burns’s Excise commission issued. - - _Nov. 5._ Centenary of the ‘Glorious Revolution’. - - _Nov._ Jenny Clow bears Burns a son. - - _Dec._ Jean joins Burns in borrowed quarters at the Isle. - - 1789. _Feb. 16._ Burns goes to Edinburgh to close accounts with Creech - and to settle Jenny Clow’s suit. - - _Feb. 28._ Burns returns to Ellisland. - - Summer. Burns meets Francis Grose. - - _Aug. 18._ Francis Wallace Burns born. - - _Sept. 1._ Burns begins duty as Excise officer. - - _Nov._ Burns ill with ‘malignant squinancy and low fever’. - - 1790. _Jan. 27._ Burns’s name placed on list of those eligible for - promotion as Examiners and Supervisors. - - _Feb._ VOL. III of _Scots Musical Museum_ published. - - _July._ Burns transferred to Dumfries 3d Division. - - _July 24._ Death of William Burns in London. - - _Dec. 1._ MS. of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ sent to Grose. - - 1791. _Mar. 31._ Anne Park bears Burns a daughter, Elizabeth. - - _April 9._ William Nicol Burns born. - - _April._ ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ published in Grose’s _Antiquities of - Scotland_ and in the March _Edinburgh Magazine_. - - _June 19-22._ Burns in Ayrshire to attend Gilbert’s wedding. - - _Aug. 25._ Auction of crops at Ellisland. - - _Sept. 10._ Formal renunciation of Ellisland lease signed. - - _Nov. 11._ Burns moves into Dumfries. - - _Nov. 29-Dec. 11._ Burns in Edinburgh. Farewell again to - Agnes M’Lehose. - - 1792. _Feb._ Burns promoted to Dumfries Port Division. - - _Feb. 29._ Capture of schooner _Rosamond_. - - _April 10._ Burns made honorary member of Royal Company of - Archers, Edinburgh. - - _April 19._ Sale of the _Rosamond’s_ carronades. - - _Aug._ VOL. IV of _Scots Musical Museum_ published. - - _Sept. 16._ Burns begins work for Thomson’s _Select Collection_. - - _Nov. 13._ Burns subscribes for Edinburgh _Gazetteer_. - - _Nov. 21._ Birth of Elizabeth Riddell Burns. - - Mid-_Dec._ Burns’s last visit to Dunlop House. - - _Dec. 31._ Inquiry into Burns’s loyalty. - - 1793. _Jan. 5._ Burns defends himself to Graham of Fintry. - - _Feb. 1._ France declares war against England. - - _Feb._ Second Edinburgh edition of _Poems_ published. - - _March._ Burns asks, and receives, burgess privileges in the - Dumfries schools. - - _May 19._ Burns moves to house in Mill Vennel. - - _June._ First number of Thomson’s _Select Collection_ published. - - _c._ _July 30-Aug. 2._ First Galloway tour with Syme. - - _Aug._ The Edinburgh sedition trials. - - _c._ _Aug. 30._ ‘Bannockburn’ sent to Thomson. - - _c._ _Dec. 31._ Beginning of the Riddell quarrel. - - 1794. _Jan. 12._ Final breach with Maria Riddell. - - _April 21._ Death of Robert Riddell. - - _c._ _May 1._ Burns declines a post on _Morning Chronicle_, - London. - - _c._ _June 25-28._ Second Galloway tour with Syme. - - _Aug. 12._ Birth of James Glencairn Burns. - - _c._ _Dec. 22._ Burns appointed Acting Supervisor at Dumfries. - - 1795. _Jan. 12._ Burns posts the letter which estranged Mrs. Dunlop. - - _Jan. 31._ Burns joins in organizing the Dumfries Volunteers. - - _Feb._ Reconciliation with Maria Riddell. - - _April._ The Reid miniature painted. Alexander Findlater resumes - his duties as Supervisor at Dumfries. - - _Sept._ Death of Elizabeth Riddell Burns. - - _Dec.-Jan._ Burns ill with rheumatic fever. - - 1796. _Mar. 12-14._ Food riots in Dumfries. - - _July 3-16._ Burns at the Brow Well. - - _July 18._ Burns writes his last letter. - - _July 21._ Death of Burns. - - _July 25._ Funeral of Burns, and birth of his son Maxwell. - - _Dec._ VOL. V of _Scots Musical Museum_ published. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PREFACE v - - CHRONOLOGY OF BURNS’S LIFE xiii - - I. SCOTLAND 3 - - II. EDUCATION 34 - - III. MEN 79 - - IV. WOMEN 135 - - V. LIVELIHOOD 188 - - VI. SONG 234 - - VII. THE SCOT 278 - - - - -PRIDE AND PASSION - -ROBERT BURNS 1759-1796 - - - - -PRIDE AND PASSION - - - - -I - -SCOTLAND - - -A Scot in the eighteenth century was a poor relation, subject to the -slights and scorns of more prosperous kinfolk, and reared amid poverty, -theology, and filth. When Robert Burns was born, on January 25, 1759, -his native land was almost at the nadir of its independent existence. -Proud and warlike and desperately poor, Scotland had been still an -essentially feudal nation when King James VI was called from amid the -bickerings of his jealous nobles and intransigent clergy to become -James I of England. The permanent removal of the court to London left -the country more than ever the prey of contention among its nobles and -fanaticism among its ecclesiastics; governed by a parliament without -authority; torn at intervals by rebellion and civil strife; denied -commercial parity with England, and cut off from the old-time free -intercourse with France. - -The Act of Union of 1707, by admitting Scotland to commercial -privileges formerly restricted to England, started the country -on the road to material prosperity, but promised to destroy the -last vestiges of national pride. It was ‘the end of an old song’. -Thenceforward the affairs of Scotland were entrusted to a handful of -representatives at Westminster, too small, in those days of patronage -and pocket-boroughs, to have enabled even a Scottish Parnell, had -there been one, to sway the balance of power. Scotland was no longer -Scotland; it was North Britain. And when the House of Hanover succeeded -to the English throne, the last vestige of Scottish influence in the -government seemed to have vanished. Ruled no longer by the Stuarts--her -own kings, even though absentee--but by ‘an insolent, beef-witted race -of foreigners’, Scotland turned more and more to the things of the -flesh. The last flicker of the ancient loyalties in the ’45 shed only -light enough to reveal their death. The Lowlands, though they could -not stomach the double treason of a man like Murray of Broughton, -acquiesced in the brutal destruction of the Highland clans. Most of the -comfortable merchants and landed gentry had viewed the uprising with -an apprehension even livelier than that felt by the German court four -hundred miles away; when the Highlands were crushed they rejoiced in -their own increased security, and showed their loyalty to the reigning -House by christening their daughters Charlotte and Wilhelmina, and -their new streets and squares Hanover and Brunswick and George. - -By the middle of the century Scottish affairs had settled into an order -which might alter in degree, but would not alter in kind, for two -generations at least. Politically, the country was little more than -a conquered province. Economically it was beginning to emerge from -age-old poverty, but the new prosperity of the lucky few was widening -the gap between them and the poor and still further depressing the -latter. Religiously it was awakening from the nightmare of Calvinism -which had paralysed free thought and free action for two centuries. -Intellectually its literary life was being overwhelmed by the fashions -and standards of England, and its educated citizens were suffering from -an inferiority complex of national scope. - -When Warren Hastings was impeached, Burns was angry because it was done -in the name of the Commons of England and not of Great Britain. Had -he expressed his opinion in public, instead of in a private letter, -it would have roused little sympathy among his more influential -countrymen. Most would have dismissed it as the rant of a fanatic; a -few would have held it downright treason. There was no money in being a -Scottish patriot. As in England, all things political went by favour. -The only difference was that in Scotland they went by favour of one -man--the Duke of Argyll, the Earl of Bute, or Henry Dundas, as the case -might be. All power concentrated at last in the hands of the national -boss. He ‘suggested’ the choice of the sixteen Scottish peers who -were to represent their country in the House of Lords; he controlled -the election of the forty-five members of the Commons; his word was -law as to all appointive offices. Fifteen members of the Commons were -chosen by the burgh councils--self-perpetuating groups which in ‘the -taciturn regularity of ancient affairs’ allowed no outsider to intrude -on their privileges and their graft. The other thirty were chosen -by the counties, and in all Scotland there were fewer than three -thousand qualified electors, every man of whom was ticketed as to party -allegiance and family connection. Most of them also had their prices -plainly marked on their tickets. Of course the price need be nothing so -crude as cash. Every job, from a cadetship with the East India Company -to the governorship of a province, was obtainable by influence, and -by influence only; hence there were plenty of ways of swaying a man’s -vote, especially if he had a rising family of hungry younger sons, -without soiling his fingers with gold. - -Everyone played the game, and took the rules for granted. Why wait -for merited promotion, if you could get it quicker by pulling wires? -The only man Sir Walter Scott ever deliberately cut was the one who -publicly criticized him for securing his brother’s appointment to a -post which he knew was soon to be abolished--with a pension for the -ousted incumbent. It was a comfortable system for those on the inside. -As for the others, they were expected to do their duty in that state of -life to which it had pleased God to call them. - -But it was not merely in political jobs that the influential classes -were doing well for themselves. The Act of Union had admitted Scottish -merchants to the privileges of the colonial trade formerly open only to -the English. Throughout the eighteenth century the south of Scotland -experienced a whole series of industrial and real estate booms. -Though by twentieth-century standards of bankruptcy the booms were -small and local, they had all the familiar characteristics. Glasgow -and its neighbourhood, for instance, when once it had recovered from -the losses of the crazy Darien Expedition--as wild a speculation as -the later Mississippi Bubble in France and the South Sea madness in -England--throve soberly on its steadily increasing commerce with the -West Indies and the American Colonies. The passerby today, between the -Trongate and the Broomielaw, may read in Union Street and George Square -how mercantile Scotland felt towards the loss of its parliament, and -find Jamaica and Virginia Streets underscoring the reason; further -west, St. Vincent Street, Nile Street, Pitt Street, and Wellington -Street show the direction of Glaswegian sympathies in the long struggle -with Napoleon. And since commerce is by definition two-sided the ships -which brought back American cotton and tobacco and sugar took out -Scottish linens and woolens and shoes from steadily growing centres of -manufacture. - -On the east coast, Edinburgh was not merely expanding; it was on the -way to transforming itself. Unable by its location to share directly in -the overseas trade, it throve on the legal business which grew out of -that trade, on the increasing demand for education which benefited both -the university and the printers and booksellers, and on the invested -profits of Scotsmen who had made money in the East or West Indies and -who settled in the capital when they retired. Until after the ’45 the -city was still packed along the ridge from Holyrood to the Castle, -its population crowded into the tall tenements which shut out the low -northern sun from the narrow wynds. Its first expansion was to the -south, in a development, near the present site of the University, on -which Burns’s father and uncle found work when they struck out for -themselves in 1750. To the north of the Old Town all was then open -country. At the foot of the Castle Rock, where the railway tracks now -run, the marshy Nor Loch still received whatever of the city’s garbage -did not remain in the streets. Burns was four years old when the -real growth of the modern city began with the building of the North -Bridge to connect the Old Town with the ridge which paralleled it to -northward. Each year thereafter saw new houses or new squares added, -but as late as 1800 the New Town still consisted only of Princes, -George, and Queen Streets from St. Andrew Square to Charlotte Square. - -Until after Burns’s death the whole area, despite the Georgian dignity -and charm of its houses, retained many of the features of a new and raw -development. In particular, the valley was half choked by the hideous -Mound formed of the earth excavated in grading the New Town. The laying -out of the Princes Street Gardens and the crowning of the Mound with -the Scottish National Gallery were still far in the future--there was -even talk of a row of buildings on the south side of Princes Street -which would have blinded one of the finest city vistas in the world, -and have made the Gardens forever impossible. By 1786, when Burns -first saw Edinburgh, wealth and fashion had already deserted the Old -Town, and middle-class respectability was beginning to follow, but -the business life of the city still centred in the shops and taverns -which lined the High Street, crammed the narrow Luckenbooths which -congested traffic beside disfigured St. Giles’s, and overflowed into -all the adjacent courts and closes. Professional men transacted their -business in taverns in preference to their crowded living-quarters; all -Edinburgh was accustomed to gather at midday in the neighbourhood of -the Cross to arrange business and social appointments. - -Sanitation did not exist. Water for cooking and such exiguous washing -as was done was carried by porters from the public wells to the -various flats in the tall ‘lands’; the day’s filth of the household -was collected in a tub on the landing of the stairs and at bedtime the -barefoot maid-servants emptied it out of the windows--theoretically to -be gathered up by the scavengers; actually, too often, to lie where it -fell until a rain washed it away. Even the hardy nostrils of Londoners -quailed before the marshalled stenches of Edinburgh, and travelling -Scotsmen gauged the smells of foreign cities like Lisbon by their nasal -memories of home. That children should die like flies was inevitable; -the marvel is that any survived. Deficiency diseases were as rife as -filth diseases. Rickets was taken for granted--a simile, humorous in -intent but ghastly in effect in one of Scott’s letters, gives a glimpse -of nurse-maids in Princes Street trying to compel unhappy rachitic -children to walk. Human life has always been Scotland’s cheapest -commodity. That a high degree of social and intellectual culture should -flourish amid this filth is merely another proof of human capacity for -ignoring what it is too indolent to correct. - -Outside the cities, as well as in them, Scottish life was beginning -to change. Primitive agriculture in the northern kingdom, like the -sanitation of Edinburgh, seemed almost to be an effort to demonstrate -just how badly a thing could be done. The poorest sorts of oats and -barley, the scrubbiest of cattle, were raised by the worst methods. The -unfenced fields were divided by a system of ridges and ditches which -managed to combine the maximum of soil wastage with the minimum of -drainage. The ‘infield’, as this dyked portion of the farm was called, -was cultivated with ploughs so crude and awkward that they required -four horses and two men to handle them. The ‘outfield’, or pasture, was -never cultivated or manured; overrun with moss and weeds it yielded -even in summer only a scanty and unwholesome pasturage, with little if -any surplus to carry the cattle through the winter. All excess stock -was slaughtered in the fall, and for six months of the year the people -who could afford meat at all had to subsist like seamen on salt beef -and smoked mutton hams. The wretched beasts which were kept through the -winter were fed mainly on straw, and frequently by spring were so weak -and emaciated that they had to be carried to the pasture. - -The owners of the cattle lived in a style which an Iroquois would have -thought primitive. Gilbert Burns resented the statement that his famous -brother was born in a hovel. The Alloway cottage, he declared, was -better than the houses then occupied by many substantial farmers. So it -was. It had a chimney, whereas in many a cottage and farmhouse, long -after Burns’s youth--Keats saw plenty of them in Ayrshire in 1818--such -of the smoke as did not enter the eyes and lungs of the tenants escaped -through the door. But even with a chimney the average farmhouse or -labourer’s cottage, with its walls of stone or rammed clay, its earthen -floor and thatched roof, and with the fire seldom built up except for -cooking, had a winter chill and dampness that bred tuberculosis in the -young and rheumatism in the old. As at Alloway, the stable was usually -under the same roof, and its reek mingled with the dampness and the -smell of unwashed humanity. An English proverb in the seventeenth -century asserted that the Scots had neither bellows, warming-pans, nor -houses of office; and that the proverb still held in the eighteenth is -proved alike by experiences of Johnson and Boswell in gentlemen’s homes -in the Highlands and by episodes in the chapbooks of Dugal Graham which -reveal the same use of the fireplace as Shakespeare records of the -inn at Rochester. Outside the door was the midden-dub or glaur-hole, -manure-heap of man and beast alike, often so surrounded with stagnant -water that the ‘rather pretty’ girl whom Keats saw standing at a -cow-house door in the Highlands, ‘fac’d all up to the ankles in -dirt’, would in the Lowlands a generation earlier have been a sight -too commonplace to excite remark. When the seepage from the midden-dub -reached the water-supply the cycle of filth and typhoid was complete. -Dead animals which could not be eaten were usually dumped into the -nearest stream, so that if the water-supply was not contaminated in one -way, it was pretty sure to be in another. But unless the animal were a -horse, it had to be very dead indeed not to be eaten. Sheep that had -died by accident or disease had a special name--‘braxies’--and were the -perquisite of the shepherds; the flesh of diseased cattle was sometimes -the only meat farm servants tasted; in Edinburgh young Henry Mackenzie -once observed two bakers of cheap ‘mutton pies’ suspiciously engaged -by night about the carcass of a horse on the bank at the back of the -Castle. - -Within doors all domestic equipment was on the same primitive scale -as the housing. At meal-times the pot containing the thick oatmeal -porridge which was the staple food was placed in the centre of -the table, and each member of the family--servants included--fell -to work with his own spoon. Barley for broth was prepared on the -knocking-stone, counterpart of the Mexican _metate_. Pewter dishes -were a luxury, and crockery ones almost unknown. Wooden trenchers were -frequently used even by the clergy, and were the regular thing in -farmhouses; the milk was kept in wooden vessels so permeated with dirt -and bacteria that it soured in a few hours. The entire family lived -and ate and slept in two rooms, with sometimes a windowless loft above -as additional sleeping-quarters for the servants or some of the older -children. Every cottage had at least one box-bed built into the wall. -When the occupants retired and closed the sliding wooden doors they -enjoyed a practically airless seclusion amid their own effluvia. The -rest of the family slept on rough cots, or even straw pallets on the -floor. The popular saying, ‘The clartier [dirtier] the cosier’, was not -satire; it was just a matter-of-fact summary of rural living conditions. - -In dwellings like these, where a large family was often augmented by -several servants, privacy was as impossible as in an army barrack. -Any conversation too intimate to be shouted above the uproar of -the children into the ears of a mixed audience had to be conducted -elsewhere than in the house--in the fields, if the weather permitted; -in the stable otherwise. Even so, of course, all the circumstances -leading up to the conversation were known to a large and intensely -interested group. Hence the young people, making a virtue of publicity, -took their cronies into their confidence and employed them to arrange -their trysts. Thus if James Smith beckoned Jean Armour or Betsy Miller -away from her giggling family it was fairly certain that he was making -an appointment for Rob Mossgiel and not for himself; if Burns waited -on Jenny Surgeoner it was in John Richmond’s interests and not in his -own. It was difficult to surprise, and impossible to shock by any of -the normal processes of nature, a people who lived in such conditions. -No one had to explain ‘the facts of life’ to the children of that -world; they witnessed them daily. It would almost seem that a belief in -original virtue, rather than original sin, was requisite to explain why -the moral status of the peasantry was often so much less squalid than -their physical surroundings. - -As the century advanced, however, closer intercourse with England -roused ambitious landlords to attempt improvements. Trees were planted -on the hillsides and about the naked houses; the ‘infields’ were -levelled and enclosed. Yet nine-tenths of the fences in Ayrshire were -not built until after 1766, and as late as 1800 two-thirds of Fife was -still fenceless. Rotation of crops, better cultivation, artificial -grasses, more productive types of grain, were all experimented with. -Potatoes and turnips, regarded as garden luxuries in the early part -of the century, began to be grown on a large scale for human food and -stock feed respectively. John Wesley in 1780 noted that vegetables had -become as plentiful in Scotland as in England, though on his first -visit, in 1762, he had found none at all, even on noblemen’s tables. -Carts were introduced for farm work, to take the place of the ‘creels’ -or panniers, in which manure had formerly been borne on horseback to -the fields, and of the rough sledges on which the sheaves had been -hauled from harvest field to stackyard. The wide use of carts, however, -had in many districts to await the improvement of the roads; in some -instances, when landlords first offered wheeled vehicles as gifts to -their tenants, they were refused because it seemed impossible to drag -them through the mud. - -Some few of the improving landlords were actuated by disinterested zeal -to better living-conditions; their stubborn and superstitious peasants -were helped against their will. Many more landlords were motivated by -simple greed to improve their rent-rolls. By breaking up small holdings -occupied on short-term leases, and throwing several together, they made -more profitable farms which were rented for long terms. The consequent -evictions, however, produced an over-supply of would-be tenants whose -desperate need for land resulted in competitive bidding from those -willing to take a gambling chance on getting from the soil more than it -really had to give. If they succeeded, it was too often at the expense -of the health and strength of themselves, their children, and their -servants. - -Nevertheless, so far as the improvements in methods increased the -productivity of the farms, the new developments were economically -sound. But the nation’s increasing foreign trade operated to inflate -land values. Merchants who had made money in the Indies wished to -retire, and the prestige of setting up as landed gentry combined with -the lack of sound corporate investments to bid up the value of land -in the more attractive parts of the kingdom to levels where a fair -return on the investment was possible only by rack-renting the tenants. -Burns himself, and his father before him, were victims of this -over-capitalization. They had to pay for marginal lands at rates which -would have been fair rentals for the best. And of course speculation -in land brought with it speculative banking. In Burns’s youth many of -the Ayrshire gentry were crippled or ruined outright by the failure of -the Douglas and Heron Bank, which, organized on a lavish scale, quickly -got into trouble through excessive loans on real estate. The ruined -gentry retired to the Continent, or to lodgings in Edinburgh, and their -estates were taken over by nabobs home from the Indies. - -All this drama of political corruption and of social and economic -change was played against the background of the old religious life -of Scotland. Though the intellectual life of the country had never -been squalid like its physical life, it had at the beginning of the -eighteenth century become torpid. From the time of John Knox until -after the Act of Union the real government of Scotland, like that of -colonial Massachusetts, was a theocracy. The King and the powers of the -state were far off from the life of the average peasant or tradesman, -but the Kirk watched all his goings out and comings in. Not only did -it administer matters which in other times and other nations have -been regarded as spiritual concerns, but it also largely took the -place of magistrates and police. Critics of puritanism who have chosen -colonial New England as their dire example have made a mistake. They -should have chosen Scotland. Whatever the theory of church government -in New England may have been, in practice the man at odds with the -establishment suffered few real hardships beyond the loss of his vote -and a moderate amount of discriminatory taxation--provided he had -the discretion to mind his business and keep his mouth shut. But in -seventeenth-century Scotland estrangement from the church might mean -exile from the kingdom, under penalty of practical starvation if the -rebel tried to stick it out at home. Except that it lacked the power -to relax its heretics to the secular arm for mutilation or death, the -Scottish hierarchy was own brother to the Spanish Inquisition. - -In every parish the Kirk Session was supposed to maintain a snooping -committee to investigate the conduct of the laity. The reckless -parishioner who desecrated the Sabbath by cooking a hot meal, by -puttering in his garden, or even by taking a walk, was haled before -the Session for discipline, and could be reinstated in the communion -only by confession of his sin and payment of a fine. For more serious -offences the penalties were proportionately heavier, unless one were -wealthy or powerful enough to cow the inquisitors. Burns had painfully -intimate knowledge of the cutty stool, or mourners’ bench, whereon -those guilty of fornication or other deadly sin had thrice to appear -before the congregation while the minister rebuked them at length and -with specific detail. Girls sometimes committed suicide or murdered -their children to escape the public shame, and the effect of the ordeal -on those who submitted was more likely to be hardening than chastening. -Many another youth besides Burns inwardly resolved thenceforth to live -up to the reputation thus fastened upon him. - -The Kirk frowned upon, and tried to suppress, such secular amusements -as music and dancing. In spite of the ban, the custom of ‘penny -weddings’, whereby impecunious young couples in the rural districts -sought, by giving what was in effect a subscription ball, to raise -money enough to set them up in housekeeping, still persisted; but even -these gatherings had a slightly furtive quality, and in the stricter -homes all such things were taboo. The moral results of the policy of -repression were almost wholly bad. The older men, in default of other -relaxation, devoted themselves to drink; the younger, to the pleasures -that give its point to Burns’s simile, ‘as busy as an Edinburgh bawd on -a Sunday evening’. - -Probably none but a native Scot can understand the finer points of -Scottish theology. Fortunately, however, such understanding is not -needed for a general grasp of church affairs in the eighteenth century. -Primitive Calvinism shares with Marxism the distinction of being the -most completely deterministic philosophy ever widely accepted in the -western world. All men were held to be equally sinful and equally -deserving of eternal damnation. ‘Adam as the federal representative of -the human race had determined its fate once and for all by violating -that unfortunate covenant which he and the Deity had contracted with -regard to the forbidden fruit. A vicarious sacrifice had indeed been -offered; but the power to avail themselves of this expiation was to -be communicated to only a few of the minority to whom it had been -made known; and these were to be saved to show that God was merciful, -as the rest were to be damned to show that He was just.’[1] This was -the creed of which Oliver Wendell Holmes said that any decent person -really holding it ought to go mad out of mere self-respect. And -like every other rigid system it had the effect of stultifying its -sincerest adherents. The most patriotic of historians are compelled -to recognize the general intellectual torpor of Scottish theological -and philosophical writing in the seventeenth and early eighteenth -centuries. The thinking of the clergy had been finished for them by -John Calvin and John Knox; all that remained for them to do was to -expound. No first-rate mind can subdue itself to the mere unquestioning -exposition of other men’s views without losing its edge, and few of -the parish clergy in Scotland had started with first-rate minds. -Their preaching was commonly a dreary reiteration of the doctrine of -the Four-Fold State of Man--first, Innocence or Primitive Integrity, -next Nature or Entire Depravation, then Grace or Begun Recovery, and -finally Consummate Happiness or Misery--brightened only by sadistic -imaginings of the details of eternal torment. As if these doctrinal -limitations were not sufficiently deadening, custom required that -one of the minister’s two discourses each Sunday should be preached -from his ‘ordinary’ text--which meant that he was expected to take -the same text week after week and torture it into new applications of -doctrine. If his invention failed under the strain, and he changed his -‘ordinary’ too often, zealous parishioners were likely to complain to -the Presbytery. Add to these handicaps the fact that few ministers had -money enough to buy books, even had they wished for books, and one -begins to realize why Scottish manses two hundred years ago contributed -no such leaders of national thought as were even then emerging from -English rectories. - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] W. L. Mathieson: _Scotland and the Union_ (Glasgow, 1905), p. 225. - -Nevertheless the tides of changing ideas stirred even the strongholds -of Calvinism. Before the seventeenth century ended Michael Wigglesworth -in Massachusetts had found himself compelled slightly to modify the -doctrine of infant damnation in the direction of human decency; in -Scotland the ‘common sense’ doctrines of the Deists penetrated during -the eighteenth century even among those who abhorred the name of Deism. -From 1729 until his death in 1746 Francis Hutcheson, as professor of -Moral Philosophy in Glasgow University, expounded to steadily growing -classes his theory of the ‘moral sense’--an allegedly innate human -capacity for distinguishing right from wrong. This concept of innate -virtue as opposed to the idea of original sin rapidly gained ground -among the laity and the younger clergy of the cities, despite bitter -hostility on the part of the conservatives. Preaching began to stress -conduct rather than the will of a cruel and capricious god as the way -of salvation. A healthier and more prosperous nation was in fact -rebelling against a harsh and depressing philosophy, and the clergy -were following the lead of their congregations. By the third quarter -of the century the liberal faction, the Moderates or New Lights, were -in almost undisputed control in the metropolitan districts, though -the fundamentalists, or Old Lights, still flourished in the smaller -towns and in the rural parishes. The more rigorous extremes of kirk -discipline began to relax. Though in 1757 John Home was compelled to -resign his pulpit to escape the consequence of having written _The -Tragedy of Douglas_--to witness the early performances of which a -few of his more daring clerical brethren disguised themselves in the -garments of the laity--the ban on the theatre gradually sank into -desuetude. Even while the Edinburgh playhouse was still unlicensed, -and dramas had to be advertised as concerts of music between the parts -of which the play of the evening would be presented gratis, it became -possible for ministers to attend the performances openly. - -But the warfare of New Lights versus Old was not conducted wholly in -the realm of ideas. The fact that the more influential laity were early -converts to the new doctrines brought into the struggle politics in -its most worldly form. In parishes where the local magnates exercised -the right of presenting the minister, New Light candidates had the -preference. Hence it was the New Lights’ interest to uphold the right -of patronage against the congregation’s democratic claim to elect its -own minister. The supporters of patronage triumphed in the election -of William Robertson as Moderator of the General Assembly in 1763; the -result made the church almost as much a part of the spoils system as -the government was, and gave its leadership into the hands of supple -ecclesiastical politicians. In consequence the spread of New Light -doctrine went hand in hand with a steady decline in the moral influence -of the clergy, while schisms and secessions sapped the organization. -Because the Kirk was morally as well as intellectually bankrupt the -laughter of Burns’s satires shook it to its foundations. To the -church of John Knox such ridicule would have meant no more than a -mosquito means to an elephant. Burns’s Edinburgh friends were right in -maintaining that the conduct and doctrines which he attacked would have -disappeared in another generation without his aid; what neither they -nor he could foresee was that in 1843 it would be the Old Light clergy -who would restore moral leadership to the ministry by daring to give up -their livings for conscience’ sake. - -Behind the New Light doctrines expounded by Hutcheson and his -followers lay of course the ideas of such English Deists as Locke -and Shaftesbury. Strong convictions on philosophical and theological -questions were going out of fashion; like Franklin in America the New -Light Scots had persuaded themselves that enlightened self-interest, -sweet reasonableness and common sense, were attainable goals for -mankind at large, and could be trusted to solve problems of morals and -economics alike. And this English influence in the field of theology -and philosophy was typical of the entire range of literary expression -in Scotland. The national inferiority complex showed itself most -plainly of all in the realm of words. - -Historically the Scottish language is to English what Provençal is -to French and Catalan to Spanish--an ancient and independent local -dialect which had developed its own literature at least as early as had -the more central region which afterwards took the lead. The speech of -Lowland Scotland was the direct descendant of that Northumbrian dialect -of Old English which Bede and Caedmon spoke. Throughout the Middle Ages -and the early Renaissance Scotland maintained amid her poverty as rich -a literary tradition as England did. In fact, from the death of Chaucer -until the beginning of the Elizabethan era the student of British -literature must look north of the Tweed to find, in the writings of -King James I, Robert Henryson, Gawain Douglas and William Dunbar, -anything worthy the name of poetry. The decay of Scots as a literary -language was started by the Reformation and finished by the Union. By -introducing the Geneva version of the English Bible the Reformation -made Southern English the language of the church, in idiom if not in -pronunciation. The accession of James VI to the English throne made -Southern English also the language of the court. King James himself -wrote in Scots; his subject, William Drummond of Hawthornden, wrote in -English. Drummond’s example was followed by all the prose writers and -most of the poets of Scotland from his day to ours. After the Union -even the poets who used Scots did so consciously and not because such -expression was wholly spontaneous. - -Of these poets, Allan Ramsay, whose productive period covers roughly -the three decades from 1711 to 1740, was the most popular. And Scots -poetry, as practised by Ramsay and by his friend and contemporary -William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, tended more and more to what -Samuel Johnson would have described as the easy and vulgar, and -therefore the disgusting. Their work exhibits humour, and something -of the conversational quality of the familiar essay, but dignity -and deep poetic emotion are notably absent. Moreover, the dialect -in which they wrote tended more and more to become a synthetic and -standardized language, embodying words and idioms common to a large -section of southern Scotland but without firm roots in any one region. -The Aberdeenshire dialect used by Alexander Ross in his _Helenore_ -is almost the last fresh transcription of the speech of a definite -section of the country. Written Scots was rapidly becoming what -nineteenth-century English and American authors made other dialects--a -semi-literary vernacular employed for humorous effect or for an -affectation of colloquial ease. Even Burns himself at times gave -artificial Scottish flavour to his verse by using English idioms in -Scottish spelling. Since the end of the eighteenth century no writer -of Scots verse has succeeded in introducing any new elements. At its -best, such writing sounds like imitations of Burns; at its worst, like -imitations of his imitators. - -But when Burns came before the public even this conventionalized -literary Scots seemed on the point of extinction. Though Ramsay’s -_Tea-Table Miscellany_--which included many purely English verses--was -still popular as a song-book, the rest of his work was neglected. -Hamilton of Gilbertfield’s recension of Blind Harry’s _History of -Sir William Wallace_ was no more than a story-book for children. The -unhappy Robert Fergusson, starved and neglected, had ended his life -in a madhouse, and fashionable Edinburgh, glancing askance at his -satirical verses, said it served him right. Ramsay was a crude homespun -figure of the generation in which Thomson by writing _The Seasons_ -had given his countrymen a poem which they could show to Englishmen -without blushing; ‘The Daft Days’ and the rest of Fergusson’s work was -little better than a national disgrace when set beside the beauties -of James Beattie’s _Minstrel_. Nevertheless there still underlay the -new fashions a literary tradition which most of the anglicizing gentry -scorned or ignored. An oral Scottish literature was still alive, -though it was soon to perish when its lovers smothered it by writing -it down. Percy’s _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, which first -gave highbrow sanction to the popular ballads of Scotland and northern -England, were not published until Burns was six years old, and even -Percy only scratched the surface of this rich deposit. Throughout the -century scores of ballads still circulated by oral tradition which had -never been recorded in writing, and in these the genuine spirit of the -Scottish language flourished without concession to fashionable English. - -Even more important than the ballads for the training of a poet like -Burns were the folk-songs. The Scots had always been a musical people, -and despite the opposition of the stricter clergy traditional songs -or airs for almost every human occasion were known to everyone, high -or low. The tradition, moreover, was still very much alive. Scottish -song gave the nation its revenge for the military humiliations of the -’45. The taunting lilt of ‘Hey, Johnie Cope, are ye waukin yet?’ could -be relied on to remind English garrisons of the inglorious conduct of -their fellow soldiers at Prestonpans, and all Scotland’s contempt for -the Hanoverian kings and their mistresses went into the ribaldry of -‘The Sow’s Tail to Geordie’. Even so, only a fraction of the popular -songs had any political bearing. More of them were convivial; many more -of them erotic. Every phase of sexual love from the crudest bawdry -to idyllic beauty found some expression in verse--the latter, it -must be confessed, more rarely and less effectively than the former. -Yet these crude songs, interesting mainly for the surprising variety -and ingenuity of their erotic symbolism, were the raw material--raw -in more than one sense--from which Burns wrought such lyrics as ‘My -Love is like a red red rose’, ‘John Anderson’, and ‘Coming thro’ the -rye’. While Burns was still a lad, David Herd, a retiring antiquary -in Edinburgh, began the systematic collection of this folk poetry on -so large a scale and with such a complete absence of prudery that it -was not until the twentieth century that the whole of his manuscript -collection was printed. He had himself published in 1776 two volumes of -what he considered the best work. At the same time musicians like James -Oswald and Neil Gow were collecting the airs of Highlands and Lowlands -alike. The singing of the old songs, with or without instrumental -accompaniment, was a favourite pastime in Scottish drawing rooms, and -even unliterary folk would frequently feel moved to compose new words -to some well-liked melody. - -Alongside this honest love of native things, whether expressed in a -girl’s singing at her harpsichord or in David Herd’s careful recording -of old words, another literature was growing up of imitation, forgery, -and ‘improvement’. It had become a literary convention for every -composer of an imitation ballad to offer it to the public as a copy -from an ancient manuscript. Though a few of these imitations, like the -‘Hardyknute’ of Lady Elizabeth Wardlaw, were close enough to the spirit -of folk literature to deceive even experts, the mass of them were so -mawkish and verbose as to bring the term ‘Scottish poetry’ to the verge -of contempt. Primacy in these qualities, as in popularity, belonged to -James Macpherson’s alleged translations of the poems of Ossian--a work -passionately defended by the Scots because it depicted their savage -ancestors as a trifle more chivalrous and vastly more sentimental than -Bayard or Sidney, admired on the Continent because it supported the -current delusion about the nobility of man in a state of nature, and -cherished by Napoleon Bonaparte as one of the simple pleasures which -appeal to the enterprising burglar in his hours of relaxation. - -But the harm done to traditional literature by imitations and forgeries -was trivial compared with that inflicted by some of those people who -professed to admire it. In the latter part of the eighteenth century -the teaching of music in Edinburgh had passed largely into the hands -of foreigners. Names like Domenico Corri, Pietro Urbani, and Theodor -Schetki are as prevalent on title-pages as their owners were on the -concert stage, and under this Italianate influence many traditional -melodies were ‘harmonized’ and ‘improved’ until all their native vigour -was lost in empty flourishes. And as with the music, so with the -words. ‘Correct’ and sentimentalized lyrics were substituted for the -sturdy old words, remained in use long enough to push the latter into -oblivion, and then, their novelty gone, themselves sank into disuse and -dragged the music with them. - -This effort to refine the national heritage of music was merely one -phase of the whole sense of provincial inferiority which afflicted -Scotland. Italian music and English literature, speech, and manners, -were the ideals towards which genteel Scots strained. National pride -in James Thomson and John Home exulted more in the fact that they -wrote English acceptable in England than in their use of Scottish -materials. Even the devastating scepticism of David Hume was forgiven -him because he had almost purified his language of Scotticisms. When -Johnson ridiculed Hume’s English Boswell writhed in agony, and was -correspondingly elated when the dictator praised Blair’s sermons and -was moved to tears by Beattie’s _Minstrel_. - -When Thomas Sheridan came to Edinburgh in 1761 to give a course of -lectures on elocution, ‘he was patronized by the professors in the -College, by several of the clergy, by the most eminent among the -gentlemen at the bar, by the judges of the Court of Session, and by all -who at that time were the leaders of public taste’. - -Thenceforward, ‘correct pronunciation and elegant reading’ were -reckoned ‘indispensable acquirements for people of fashion and for -public speakers’. In other words, these people of fashion, like Francis -Jeffrey on his return from Oxford, gave up the broad Scots in return -for the narrow English. In the very year of the Kilmarnock _Poems_, Sir -John Sinclair of Ulbster, one of the most public-spirited Scots of his -generation, brought out a two-hundred-page volume of _Observations on -the Scottish Dialect_. His purpose was not to preserve but to destroy -his native speech. His book is a comprehensive index expurgatorius -of all the words, phrases, and idioms a Scotsman must avoid--many -of them today a part of the standard speech of the United States, -and even of England. Thus, ‘best man’ is a Scotticism for ‘bride’s -man’; ‘hairdresser’ is to be preferred to ‘barber’; ‘sore eyes’ is -a vulgarism; ‘whisky’ should be called ‘usquebae’ or ‘aquavitae’. -‘Heather’ and ‘peat’ and ‘bracken’ are condemned along with ‘mittens’ -and ‘kindling’; it betrays provincial origin to ask if a friend is in, -or if he has gone out walking. ‘It is, indeed, astonishing,’ says Sir -John, ‘how uncouth, and often how unintelligible, Scotch words and -phrases are to an inhabitant of London, and how much it exposes such -as make use of them, to the derision of those with whom they happen to -have any communication or intercourse.’ However, he adds, a Scot should -choose carefully even from the speech of London. ‘Cockney phrases a -Scotchman is very apt to get into when he makes his first appearance -in London. And when he can easily and fluently bring out, _this here -thing_, and _that there thing_, for _this_ or _that thing_; _I knode_, -for _I knew_; _on it_, for _of it_, as, _I heard on it_; _grass_, for -_asparagus_; _your’n_ and _his’n_, for _yours_ and _his_, he fancies -himself a complete Englishman.’ - -The anglicizing mania extended even to people’s names. David Malloch, -when he crossed the Border, changed his name to Mallet; John Murray -the publisher was originally M’Murray, as his predecessor, Millan, -had been Macmillan; William Almack, the proprietor of the famous -assembly-rooms in London, had started life as M’Caul. One of Burns’s -own friends, James M’Candlish, dropped the prefix when he entered -Glasgow University, and became simply Candlish. Even today, in spite -of Burns, the anglicizing process continues: the visitor in Ayr, for -instance, will find the street-signs pointing him to the ‘New Bridge’ -and the ‘Old Bridge’. - -By 1780 Scotland could afford to smile at Johnson’s dictum that her -northern lights were only farthing candles. In literature at least -she could face English competition on equal terms. James Thomson had -become a classic; Adam Smith and Hume and Robertson had demonstrated -that the north could more than hold its own with the south in history -and philosophy; Mackenzie’s lachrymose _Man of Feeling_ disputed with -_The Vicar of Wakefield_ the claim to be the most popular short novel -of the century. In Edinburgh a _Scots Magazine_ was emulating the -methods and materials of the English _Gentleman’s Magazine_, though -when Mackenzie and his friends tried, first in _The Mirror_ and later -in _The Lounger_, to produce a Scottish _Spectator_ they found the -city not metropolitan enough to support such an enterprise. Many -people took anything sharp in the way of satire as a personal attack, -but namby-pamby was not read, and so between poverty of material and -poverty of support the journals’ straw-fire flickered and went out. - -But while the poor relations of England were thus looking forward -hopefully to the day when their speech and writing should no longer -betray their provincial origin, the social life of the country changed -more slowly. The gentry added silks and laces to their clothing, and -tea and other luxuries to their tables, but felt no special urgency for -greater cleanliness. George Dempster, fresh from a visit to Brussels -in 1756, was shocked to find that a baronet’s son of his acquaintance -had been calling on a lady of title ‘in a valet de chamber’s frock -and an unpowdered brown greezy head’. Even at the beginning of the -nineteenth century the inhabitants of a Highland mansion, though they -had got beyond the point where they were satisfied to give themselves -‘a “good wash” on Sundays, and make that do for the week’, found -their domestic routine upset by a guest who not only insisted on a -daily bath but refused to go to the river to take it. Servants in the -better houses were provided with shoes and stockings, but the general -standards of neatness were still so low as to make the cleanliness of -Holland a constant source of wonder to the visiting Scot. - -But the aping of English manners had not yet undermined the traditional -Scottish democracy of intercourse. Though the barriers which divided -gentleman from commoner were fully as strong in Scotland as they were -in England, they were not so visible. If many of the gentry lacked -wealth, they did not lack pedigree, and a plebeian could rarely hope -to cross the boundary that excluded him from social equality. Nobles -married with nobles, and lairds with lairds. Yet until the end of -the century the sons of nobles, lairds, and ploughmen commonly began -their education together in the village school, where boy-fashion they -took each other at face-value without regard to rank. The result was -an almost total absence among the lower classes of that servility -which was bred into their compeers in England. Only as more and more -of the sons of gentlemen were sent to English public schools did the -old system decay, and some of the gentry begin to compensate for the -inferiority they had been made to feel in the presence of the English -by assuming a haughty air with their humbler countrymen. - -In short, all that had distinguished Scotland as a nation was on the -way to oblivion. Literature, language, manners, and institutions -were being anglicized as fast as a people roused to uneasy -self-consciousness could manage it. In 1786 it seemed evident that -when the former things passed away it would be into the darkness in -which men and nations prefer to bury the ruder and more discreditable -features of their early days. That the memory of the discarded heritage -should be embalmed as a precious possession, and that the old world -should be forever surrounded by the romantic glory of a golden sunset -was due more to Robert Burns than to any other person. He made the -Scots conscious of the richness of their national tradition. He could -not restore it to life, but he taught his people to cherish its ruins. - - - - -II - -EDUCATION - - -Robert Burns was nearly nine years old before anything revealing -his personality impressed his family enough to make them remember -it. Unreliable tradition has it that he was a puny infant; slightly -better evidence shows him as a nervous and temperamental child, -alternating between wild high spirits and moody sullenness. Once, it -is said, Robert hid in a cupboard when he and his schoolmates were -frolicking. The master in restoring order struck the door a resounding -blow with his tawse, and the nervous shock threw the child into such -uncontrollable hysterical sobs that he had to be sent home. But the -most devout worshipper would have trouble in discerning a future poet -in so undifferentiated an episode. It is easier to do so in Gilbert -Burns’s story of what happened at Mount Oliphant one evening in 1768. - -John Murdoch the schoolmaster had got a better post, and was paying -a farewell visit to the parents of two of his promising pupils. As a -parting gift, he brought a copy of _Titus Andronicus_. Beginning to -read the play aloud, he soon came to the scene where her ravishers -taunt the mutilated Lavinia. The children, in an agony of tears, -implored him to read no more; whereupon their father dryly remarked -that in that case there was no use in Murdoch’s leaving the book. -Robert exclaimed fiercely that if it was left, he would burn it. -Murdoch warded off the father’s rebuke by commending the display of so -much sensibility, though he failed, then or later, to explain why he -considered _Titus Andronicus_ suitable reading for children. _The Man -of Feeling_ was not yet written, but ‘sensibility’ was already a word -of power, and Robert Burns was already displaying the stormy emotions -which were his to the grave. - -Murdoch’s farewell marked the end of Burns’s elementary schooling, but -the education of a boy reared as he was cannot be appraised in terms -of mere schooling. If it could, the whole story might be told in a few -paragraphs. Burns’s real education came from his family, from what the -world taught him, and from what he taught himself. His schooling was -incidental. - -The poet once had the curiosity to visit the Herald’s Office in -Edinburgh, only to discover that ‘Gules, Purpure, Argent, &c., quite -disowned’ him--no man of his name had ever borne coat armour. The -nearest he could come to it was ‘Burn’. Inquiry into his ancestry is -fruitless, because nothing in his ancestry explains Burns, any more -than the dull line of squires into which he was born can explain -Shelley, or a London livery-stable Keats. Burns’s family produced no -genius before him; it produced none after him. It is enough to record -that William Burnes, the poet’s father, came of peasant stock from the -eastern Lowlands of Scotland. The poet cherished the belief that some -of his forebears had been out in the ’Fifteen in the train of George -Keith, tenth Earl Marischal, but documentary proof is lacking. The -poet’s grandfather, Robert Burnes, farmed, apparently with indifferent -success, in Kincardineshire, first on the farm of Kinmonth, in -Glenbervie, and later at Clochnahill, Dunnottar. Robert Burnes’s second -farming venture having failed in 1747, his son William (born 1721) set -out in the following year with his younger brother, Robert, to seek -work. - -William Burnes had had some training as a gardener, and found his -first employment in Edinburgh. By 1750, however, he was in Ayrshire, -where, after brief service on two other estates, he finally entered -the service of Provost William Fergusson, laird of Doonholm in Alloway -parish. These frequent moves were not wholly the result of unsettled -labour conditions. Pride and self-assertiveness handicap the man doomed -to subordination, and these traits William Burnes possessed in full -measure. ‘Stubborn, ungainly Integrity’, said Burns of his father, ‘and -headlong, ungovernable Irascibility are disqualifying circumstances’. -William Burnes needed to be his own master, and in 1757 managed to -‘feu’ (lease in perpetuity) seven acres of land a few hundred yards -north of the ruined old Kirk of Alloway. - -Besides longing for a farm of his own, William Burnes wanted a wife -and a home. Seven acres of market-garden, supplemented by continued -part-time employment at Doonholm, made marriage possible. With his -own hands he raised the rammed-clay walls of a cottage on his land--a -cottage which his younger son declared, with more emphasis than the -timid Gilbert usually permitted himself, to be ‘such as no family of -the same rank, in the present improved style of living, would think -themselves ill lodged in’. From without, the whitewashed walls and -thatched roof of the ‘clay biggin’ were picturesque enough; within, it -was damp, dark, and narrow, and smelly withal, for the byre and stable -were under the same roof of rat-infested thatch. But such rural Scots -as lived to grow up in those days were inured to dampness, smells, and -vermin, and it was probably with unmixed pride that William Burnes and -his wife set up housekeeping in December, 1757. - -The bridegroom was ‘advanced in life’; he was in fact almost as old -when he married as his famous son was when he died. His red-haired -bride, twelve years his junior, was Agnes Broun of Kirkoswald. The -daughter of a small farmer, she had been accustomed from childhood -to the life of toil which marriage intensified. Her girlhood as -housekeeper for her widowed father and manager of his younger children -had given plenty of domestic training, but formal education was too -great a luxury for girls; the mother of Scotland’s greatest poet was -never able to write her own name. She had, however, a sort of literary -education more valuable for her son than savouring at first hand the -dullness of Boston’s _Fourfold State_ could have been. Blessed with -a sense of humour, a retentive memory, and a keen ear, the girl had -stored her mind with a wealth of ballads, folk-songs, and country -sayings which later became an integral part of her son’s thought and -art. The seeds of the poet’s imagination and wit were his mother’s; -William Burnes’s most conspicuous contribution to his son’s character -was his fierce and prickly pride. - -A little more than thirteen months after his parents’ marriage, on -January 25, 1759, Robert Burns was born. The Scottish winter was doing -its worst--‘a blast o’ Janwar’ win’ blew handsel in on Robin’. In other -words, a few days after the poet’s birth a wild Atlantic gale tore out -part of the clay gable of the cottage where it had settled unevenly -round the stone jambs of the chimney. Mother and baby had to be carried -through the storm to a neighbour’s house, where they sheltered until -the damage could be repaired. To Burns in later years the incident -seemed an augury of his own stormy life. The world had begun to -educate him to its harshness almost before he knew that he was in it. -Fortunately he had a father who was determined that his children should -also have an education in the more conventional sense. - -Though Scotland theoretically provided a free school in every parish, -the usual gap separated theory and practice. Sometimes there was no -school at all; often the school was an unsanitary hovel presided over -by a master who was expected to live on a salary of perhaps ten or -fifteen pounds a year, and who therefore was constantly driven to -desperate shifts to provide for himself and his family. John Wilson of -Tarbolton, for instance, the victim of ‘Death and Dr. Hornbook’, tried -to eke out his meagre earnings by starting a little grocery shop in his -cottage, and in 1790 was ready to undertake the drudgery of a legal -copyist in Edinburgh in order to better his condition. After the close -of the century, when every parish was ordered by Act of Parliament -to provide its schoolmaster with a house of at least two rooms, some -lairds objected to erecting ‘palaces for dominies’. And even when a -parish had a decent schoolhouse and a competent teacher, bad roads and -lack of conveyance often made it impossible for children from outlying -farms to reach it. - -When William Burnes built his cottage at Alloway the fact that there -was no school nearer than Ayr would scarcely have worried him. His own -book-learning was sketchy, his writing cramped and laborious, though -his speech was more precise and ‘better English’ than that of most -of his neighbours. But he was devoutly religious, and cherished the -sound Presbyterian conviction that first-hand acquaintance with the -Scriptures was essential to knowledge in this world and salvation in -the next. By the time his eldest son was six years old the father, -conscious of his own inadequacy as a teacher, arranged with half a -dozen neighbours to hire a master of their own. Their choice fell on -John Murdoch, a solemn and pedantic youth of eighteen, who in mentality -somewhat resembled Ichabod Crane. For wages of about sixpence a day -and his board--which meant a share of the oatmeal and kail and part of -a bed in each crowded cottage in turn--Murdoch undertook to instruct -his charges, not without tears, in the three R’s and also in such -elementary music as would enable them to sing the Psalms of David in -metre at family worship. - -In this latter accomplishment he found Robert Burns, who in manhood -was able to remember and distinguish in all their subtle variations -hundreds of folk melodies, an almost hopeless pupil with a harsh and -untuneable voice. At the task of beating into the future poet the -elements of spelling, grammar, and syntax he was more successful. -Instruction in reading was based largely on a volume of extracts -compiled by another Scottish schoolmaster named Arthur Masson--good -enough literature for the most part, but too declamatory to be really -within the grasp of a six- or seven-year-old intelligence. Robert’s -first conscious realization of poetic experience came from Addison’s -hymn, ‘How are Thy servants blest, O Lord’: he also memorized the ‘Fall -of Cardinal Wolsey’ and other set pieces so thoroughly that throughout -his life their phrases came unbidden from his pen. If Murdoch found -difficulty in making the children understand the poetic merits of -Hamlet’s soliloquies or of long passages from Home’s _Tragedy of -Douglas_, he at least convinced some of them that poetry had meaning. -One of his favourite exercises was making them paraphrase poetry -into straight-forward prose--a device which his most famous pupil -subsequently employed in exposing bad grammar in a female admirer’s -verses. - -Murdoch was not the man to set a poetic child’s imagination on fire, -and since he applied the usual schoolmasterly standard of judging -the pupils according to their docility, it is hardly surprising that -he found the timid and gentle Gilbert a more promising lad than his -brother. In any case, Murdoch’s service was too brief to have much -permanent influence on Burns’s mind. Before the master had completed -his tenure of about two years and a half at Alloway, William Burnes -had removed to Mount Oliphant farm, separated from the school by two -miles of sodden road which must have made regular attendance difficult, -and sometimes impossible. Yet the master retained a sort of puzzled -affection for the boy whom he was too prosaic to understand, and Burns -reciprocated the feeling with real respect and esteem. Murdoch, in the -schoolroom and in the long evenings in what he called the argillaceous -fabric or mud domicile at Alloway, had at least impressed the lesson -that books had meaning and that words should be used with precision. -That Burns in later life never had any difficulty in saying precisely -what he meant, he probably owed at root to Murdoch’s severe drill; that -his style of saying it was frequently much too formal he likewise owed -to the dominie and to the prose selections of Arthur Masson. - -The earliest stages of book education are seldom important in shaping -the maturity of the learner. They only furnish him with a few tools -which he may later apply in his own way to his own ends. But with -Burns the whole pressure of his formal education was all his life in -direct conflict with his instinctive preferences. For John Murdoch, -as for Arthur Masson, Scottish vernacular literature did not exist. -Scottish writers like James Thomson and John Home, who had made -reputations in England by writing in standard English, were admired -to the far side of idolatry, but for Scottish youths, as for English, -Pope was the model for poetry; the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ for prose. -Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden were the only writers earlier than 1700 -who were widely read and unreservedly admired, though the beginnings of -romanticism were evoking some lip-service to Spenser. If Chaucer was -read at all, it was in the modernizations and imitations of Dryden, -Pope, and Prior; the Elizabethan and Caroline lyrists were safe sources -for newspaper poets to steal from, as Sterne stole from Burton. By -modern standards, the amount of native literature needed in order to -appear well-read was limited, but its very limitation intensified its -pressure. Poverty kept Burns from the influence, for good or ill, of -the classics; nothing could preserve anyone, who read at all, from the -influence of the neo-classics. Outside the door the rich vernacular -literature of Scotland was still vigorously alive, but no schoolmaster -in Burns’s boyhood would have dreamed of letting it in. - -This literature, indeed, was being steadily thrust further out of the -cultivated world. Two years before the poet’s father was born, Lady -Elizabeth Wardlaw had written the ballad fragment of ‘Hardyknute’ with -genuine folk skill; in the next generation such interest as remained -was contaminated with literary sophistication. The gentlefolk of -William Burnes’s generation could no longer write true ballads, but -they could and did write true folk-songs, as witness Jean Elliot’s -‘Flowers of the Forest’, Alison Cockburn’s ‘I’ve seen the smiling -of Fortune beguiling’, and John Skinner’s ‘Tullochgorum’ and ‘John -o’ Badenyon’. The gentlefolk of Robert Burns’s generation had lost -this power too. Burns was six years old when Percy’s _Reliques_ -inaugurated the serious study of popular literature and let loose the -spate of forgery and imitation of which Macpherson’s _Ossian_ was the -most brilliant success. The national will to believe in Macpherson’s -fabrication was proof alike against the scorn of Dr. Johnson and the -learning of antiquaries. To many Scots besides Burns Ossian was the -‘prince of poets’, to be read and admired as a patriotic duty, even if -few of his vague and turgid phrases could be remembered long enough to -quote. And what Macpherson did on the grand scale ballad ‘editors’ like -John Pinkerton were doing on a small one, debasing even their genuine -material with sentimental trash which blinded many readers to the -merits of a really honest and accurate editor like David Herd. - -But all this activity, alike of forgery and of honest collecting, -never touched Burns in his formative years. In the boy’s world the -folk literature which David Herd was recording was still alive. It is -a favourite fallacy of the half-educated to identify book-learning -with education. The things which made the mind and the art of Burns -did not come from John Murdoch, but from people whom Murdoch no -doubt patronized in his most schoolmasterful style. Agnes Broun -was illiterate, but she was not ignorant. Like most intelligent -illiterates, she had cultivated her memory, storing it with the pithy -sayings which sum up generations of folk experience, and with the words -and music of scores of old songs and ballads. These simple rhythms, -sung as she went about her work, sank into her son’s mind without his -knowing it. Years afterwards some chance association would recall an -old line or stanza of his mother’s to supply the ‘starting note’ for -a song of his own. And her repertoire was powerfully supplemented by -old Betty Davidson’s, who ‘had the largest collection in the county of -tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, -warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, -apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons and other -trumpery’. To these tales, listened to with delighted shudders, he -ascribed the first awakening of his imagination, even though some -of them scared him so thoroughly that their effect stayed with him -into manhood. No doubt many a gentleman’s son heard similar stories -from nurses and servants, but formal classical education effectually -smothered any idea of putting them to literary use. Sir Walter -Scott was almost the first child of the upper ranks to realize his -folk-heritage, and probably he owed much of his freedom to do so to -the interruption of his scholastic training. Ill-health saved him from -formalism, as poverty saved Burns. - -Burns’s acquaintance with popular and traditional literature was not, -however, limited to what he heard at home. The eighteenth century -was the heyday of the chapbook and the broadside--forms of popular -literature resulting from the spread of literacy among the middle and -lower classes, which were finally swept away by the newspaper. In -Burns’s childhood every peddler’s pack contained an assortment ranging -from topical songs and reports of the death and dying words of the -latest criminal to abridgements of old histories and romances. Even the -poorest labourer could afford the penny or two these publications cost, -and they passed from hand to hand until they were worn out. William -Hamilton of Gilbertfield’s modernization of Blind Harry’s _History of -Sir William Wallace_, which so roused Burns’s boyish patriotism, may -have reached the lad in chapbook form; the Life of Hannibal which he -also mentions was almost certainly a chapbook; he was familiar from his -earliest years with such ephemera as ‘The Aberdeen Almanac’ and ‘Six -Excellent New Songs’. But he nowhere mentions another group of writings -which he assuredly read. - -Only a few years before Burns was born, Dugal Graham, the hunchbacked -bellman of Glasgow, began publishing a series of Scottish chapbooks. -Their popularity was enormous; total sales are alleged to have run -into the hundreds of thousands. The most pretentious of Graham’s -works was a metrical history of the ’45; the most characteristic were -the humorous prose tales such as ‘Jocky and Maggie’s Courtship’, ‘The -Adventures of John Cheap the Chapman’, and ‘The Comical Sayings of -Paddy from Cork’. These chaps were made up of traditional anecdotes of -a broadly comic sort, loosely strung together but supplied by Graham -with the local colour of Scottish peasant life. Much of Graham’s -material had a long history; coarse jests which go back at least as -far as Chaucer; folk-tales of unquenchable vitality, such as the one -on which Synge long afterwards based _The Shadow of the Glen_; quaint -figures of speech and wild exaggerations, some of which crossed the -Atlantic to become the progenitors of the American ‘tall story’. The -peasant world as Graham depicted it was tough and crude and unlovely, -but full of a coarse vitality which enlivened even the baldest passages -of Graham’s prose and which at its best expressed itself in pungent -phrases remembered and used by Burns, probably long after he had -forgotten their source. The most indecorous stanza in ‘Holy Willie’s -Prayer’ is based on a phrase from ‘Jocky and Maggie’s Courtship’, as is -a similar stanza in ‘Death and Doctor Hornbook’. - -But the peasant life of Scotland, however squalid its physical -circumstances as Dugal Graham portrayed them, had a variety of interest -unknown to the modern dweller in a city slum. When the technique of all -the varied crafts necessary to rural life had to be learned by example -and oral tradition, the whole process of living was an education. -Almost as soon as they were able to walk the children began to take -their part in the work of the farm. At the age of six or thereabouts -the boys would be helping to guide the four-horse team which dragged -the clumsy plough; not long afterwards they began to share in reaping, -threshing, and winnowing, besides doing the innumerable and endless -small chores of the farm. These tasks, with all their accompanying -observations of plants and animals, of weather and seasons, were -stronger influences on Burns than John Murdoch was. No poet has -revealed a closer or more accurate knowledge of nature; no poet, it -may be added, had less of romantic enthusiasm for pure scenery. Burns -knew nature as the peasant and the savage knows it, as something on -which his health and prosperity and his very life depend. Readers who -are surprised that Burns spent much of his youth in sight of the noble -peaks of Arran without ever mentioning them in his verse simply fail to -understand the realism of the peasant’s point of view. It was not the -dalesmen who won a hard living from valley farms or kept their sheep on -the bleak mountainsides who found the poetry in the Lake District. Had -Burns been reared on Loch Lomond or at Aberfoyle it would have made no -difference; he would have been too busy trying to wring a living from -the soil to note the scenery. That had to wait for Sir Walter Scott, -who had nothing to do but admire it. Even when he had won fame and had -consciously accepted his vocation as a national poet Burns paid only -lip-service to scenery as scenery. For him it was merely background -for human figures, preferably female. The spots which really stirred -his emotions were those with associations of history or song--Cawdor -Castle, the field of Bannockburn, Elibanks and Elibraes, the Bush aboon -Traquair. And the fact that so many of the folk-songs of Scotland -celebrate the streams whose valleys were the only fertile spots may -have fostered the love for running water repeatedly expressed in his -poetry, as it certainly roused him to do for the streams of Ayrshire -what his anonymous forerunners had done for the streams of the Border. - -Not all the boy’s education, however, was thus casual and informal. -When his removal from Alloway to Mount Oliphant made it impossible for -his sons to continue regular schooling William Burnes procured a few -textbooks such as Guthrie’s _Geographical Grammar_ and Stackhouse’s -_History of the Bible_ for their instruction. Despite the burden of -farm work the father managed at times to set regular lessons to be -conned at evening by the light of the kitchen fire or a tallow dip. -Robert and Gilbert helped to teach their younger brothers and sisters -to read and write; their own lessons included the use of a brief -religious catechism which their father had himself prepared with -Murdoch’s help, for William Burnes was a devout man. Even in boyhood -Burns, said Gilbert, was a reader when he could get books. He read -whatever he could get his hands on, however dull or ponderous it might -be, from theology to poetry. His own lists in his autobiography, highly -selective though they are, are proof enough. His first knowledge of -classical mythology, for instance, came from Andrew Tooke’s _Pantheon_, -an appallingly dull and didactic outline of Greek and Roman religion. -He never had Keats’s good fortune in discovering the Elizabethans: -his Homer was Pope’s and not Chapman’s. But he reached manhood with a -working knowledge of history and geography, a keen interest in current -affairs, and an acquaintance with literature which, though spotty, was -the more detailed because of its relatively narrow limits. - -William Burnes’s effort to educate his children at home was part of -a family struggle which became one of the strongest influences in -forming his son’s character. The usual destiny of the children in a -peasant family was to be hired out at the age of ten or twelve as farm -servants. This fate, with its breaking of ties, cessation of schooling, -and frequent moral danger, William Burnes was determined to avoid -if possible. He was a stern father, but an affectionate one. John -Murdoch remembered his wrath at a labourer’s ‘smutty innuendoes’, and -his children knew that carelessness in word or deed would be sharply -rebuked. But they likewise remembered many acts of wordless affection, -as when during a thunderstorm the father came to sit with his daughter -Agnes because he knew she would be frightened. - -When it became evident that the few acres at Alloway could not continue -to support his growing family, William Burnes rented from his old -employer, Provost Fergusson, the larger farm of Mount Oliphant. Gilbert -Burns, who seldom used superlatives, declared that Mount Oliphant was -almost the poorest land he had ever seen in cultivation. Yet for its -seventy bleak and stony acres William Burnes undertook to pay £40 a -year for the first six years of his lease, and £45 for the next six. -It may not be too uncharitable to assume that the Provost saw in the -tenancy of the stubbornly independent Burnes a chance to get a poor -farm raised to a better level of cultivation. At any rate he showed -his confidence in his tenant by advancing a hundred pounds towards -stocking the place. Without this help the venture would probably have -been impossible; nevertheless it saddled the family with an additional -load of debt. The weight of the burden can be realized from the fact -that in the 1770’s in nearby Clydesdale twopence a dozen was a fair -price for eggs, and chickens sold for sixpence a pair. Despite all -handicaps, however, things went fairly well for the first half of the -lease. In 1771 the family failed to take advantage of their privilege -of relinquishing the farm, and accordingly were committed to another -six years at an increased rental. Then began the series of disasters -which ultimately killed William Burnes and permanently undermined the -health of his eldest son. - -Just at the onset of these dark days William Burnes, vexed at his -children’s bad handwriting, managed to send Robert and Gilbert, turn -about, to Dalrymple parish school for instruction in penmanship and -grammar, that they might be better qualified to teach their brothers -and sisters. By the following summer (1773), John Murdoch had returned -to Ayr and Robert was spared from the farm for three weeks’ additional -tutoring. The lad clutched at the opportunity like a famished man at -food. He was with Murdoch ‘day and night, in school, at all meals, and -in all [his] walks’. At the end of the first week, Murdoch says, ‘I -told him, that as he was now pretty much master of the parts of speech, -&c., I should like to teach him something of French pronunciation; -... and immediately we attacked the French with great courage. Now, -there was little else to be heard but the declension of nouns, the -conjugation of verbs, &c. When walking together, and even at meals, I -was constantly telling him the names of different objects, ... so that -he was hourly laying in a stock of words, and sometimes little phrases. -In short, he took such pleasure in learning, and I in teaching, that it -was difficult to say which of the two was most zealous in the business; -and about the end of the second week of our study of the French, we -began to read a little of the _Adventures of Telemachus_ in Fénelon’s -own words.’ How much French Murdoch really knew is doubtful, though -he later undertook to teach it in London, and apparently secured -some pupils until the Revolution filled the city with refugees who -captured the market. Burns ultimately acquired a reading knowledge of -the language, but if his riming ‘_respectueuse_’ with ‘Susie’ is a -specimen of the pronunciation Murdoch taught he would scarcely have -made himself understood in Paris. - -Murdoch was this time most favourably impressed by Robert’s ability, -and, in his own inimitable language, regretted that at the approach of -harvest ‘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; and so he did, for -although but about fifteen, I was told that he performed the work of a -man.’ Murdoch had seen no signs of the qualities which Burns afterwards -declared made him as a child by no means a favourite with anybody; -in his eagerness for learning he displayed only the retentive memory -and the enthusiastic ardour which would have most endeared him to the -pedantic master. The ‘stubborn ungainly something’ which later ripened -into pride was filling him with smothered rebellion against his lot in -life; the weeks with Murdoch opened for a moment a door through which -it seemed that he might escape. He was becoming class-conscious, and -was developing a hatred of stupid wealth and power which never left -him. His earliest associations with the sons of the gentry had not been -unpleasant, for these lads had not yet acquired ‘a just sense of the -immense distance between them and their ragged Playfellows’. ‘My young -superiours’, he said, ‘never insulted the clouterly appearance of my -ploughboy carcass, the two extremes of which were often exposed to all -the inclemencies of all the seasons.’ They gave him stray volumes of -books; one lad even helped him with his French. Nevertheless, he could -remember in manhood how as a mere child he almost choked with rage in -church one Sunday at the sight of a pretty servant-lass being compelled -to leave her pew to make room for the stupid son of her employer. - -About the time of his last association with Murdoch he began to have -occasions for rage without going to church for them. Provost Fergusson -died in 1771, and the administration of his property fell into the -hands of a steward or factor. Fergusson had probably been lenient if -his tenant could not make payment in full on each quarter-day, but -it was the factor’s business to get in the rents, and if they were -not paid he wrote threatening letters to demand them. It is always -difficult for a debtor to see things from the creditor’s point of -view; for Robert Burns it was impossible. For him the factor was a -scoundrel, and his dunning letters were deliberate efforts to humiliate -the unfortunates in his power. Not but what the Burnes family had -reason for feeling resentful. They were doing everything that was -humanly possible, and more than was wise, to meet the factor’s demands. -They lived very poorly, even by Scottish peasant standards; meat was -almost unknown on their table; they gave up all hired help. At the -age of fourteen, as Murdoch noted, Burns was doing a man’s work, -guiding the clumsy plough, flailing out grain by hand, and performing -all the other tasks at which brute strength had to serve not merely -instead of machinery but instead of well-made tools. His gait became -the clumsy tread of the ploughman; his young shoulders developed a -permanent stoop from handling the awkward plough-stilts. But the worst -physical effect was invisible. The adolescent boy doing a man’s work -on insufficient food was incurably injuring his heart. When the lesion -began to manifest itself in dizziness and faintness Robert was not -sent to a doctor. Probably it would have made no difference if he had -been, for the trouble could scarcely have been diagnosed without a -stethoscope. Instead he used heroic measures which must have aggravated -the ailment. At one time he kept a tub of water beside his bed, and -when faintness came on him in the night he would take a cold plunge. -All his life he was plagued with fits of depression which he described -by the fashionable term, hypochondria. His heart lesion intensified the -nervous instability he had shown as a child, and thereby contributed to -the perennially reckless conduct of his manhood. In all his life, as in -his death, he continued to pay the heaviest share of the price of his -father’s struggle to hold on at Mount Oliphant. - -A boy seldom realizes that he is overstraining himself. What -irked Burns at the time, far more than ‘the unceasing moil of a -galley-slave’, was the fact that he was almost wholly cut off from -social intercourse. Burns may not have been wholly an extrovert, but -he needed society as an outlet for his high spirits and as a refuge -from his low ones. In his earlier boyhood he had found friends both -among schoolfellows of his own rank and among the sons of neighbouring -gentlemen. At Mount Oliphant he was cut off. Murdoch would come out -on his half-holidays, ‘with one or two persons more intelligent than -[himself], that good William Burnes might enjoy a mental feast’. -This conversation of ‘solid reason, sensible remark, and a moderate -seasoning of jocularity’ was not what the boy needed. Robert and -Gilbert ‘began to talk and reason like men, much sooner than their -neighbours’, but this precocious maturity only made the lad more -acutely conscious of his own lack of advantages. He envied the greater -ease and assurance of his more fortunate fellows, and out of this envy -and self-consciousness grew the aggressive manner upon which some of -the gentry later remarked with disfavour. - -As William Burnes’s tenure at Mount Oliphant neared its end the clouds -opened a little. The father had never wholly abandoned his hope of -providing his eldest son with some sort of education, and in the -summer of 1775 managed to send him for a few weeks to learn ‘dialling -and mensuration’ at Kirkoswald. Superficially the venture seemed as -fruitless as the earlier effort to learn French in three weeks. The -master, Hugh Rodger, was as pedantic as Murdoch, but inclined to be -harsh and sarcastic where Murdoch was earnest and encouraging. Though -Burns acquired some practical mathematics which later proved useful in -his Excise work, he found the more vivid part of his education outside -the classroom. With William Niven, a classmate of his own age, he -indulged in spirited impromptu debates on such adolescent topics as -‘Whether is a great general or a respectable merchant the most valuable -member of society?’ With a girl named Peggy Thomson he fell in love -briefly, but so violently as to disorganize his work during his last -days at school. Above all, he got glimpses of a sort of life very -different from the seclusion of Mount Oliphant. - -In the later eighteenth century smuggling rated as one of the major -British industries. An excise tax of twenty shillings a gallon on -spirits set an even higher premium on illicit dealing than prohibition -did in the United States in the 1920’s. Few of the ‘best people’ had -any more scruples about dealing with smugglers than Americans had about -dealing with bootleggers. Nor was smuggling confined to liquors. Tea, -French silks and laces, and other goods on which the tariff was high -were also run in in quantity. The coast near Kirkoswald was a centre -for landing goods intended for the Ayrshire and Glasgow markets because -it was almost the last point smuggling vessels could approach without -grave risk of being trapped by the revenue cutters in the narrow waters -of the Firth of Clyde. Samuel Brown, the uncle with whom Burns stayed -at Kirkoswald, probably had a quiet share in the business; at any -rate his nephew saw plenty of smugglers. In the taverns where these -men spent the profits of their successful ventures Burns witnessed -roistering of a wilder sort than market nights at Ayr exhibited. His -extremely limited means, however, make it improbable that he often -looked unconcernedly on a large tavern bill, though ten years later -he thought he had. More likely the awkward youth was a spectator, -as the poet was at Poosie Nansie’s in 1785. A Shakespearian delight -in the salty flavour of raw humanity was one of Burns’s life-long -characteristics which first found expression at Kirkoswald. In 1783 he -wrote to John Murdoch, ‘I seem to be one sent into the world, to see, -and observe; and I very easily compound with the knave who tricks me of -my money, if there be anything original about him which shews me human -nature in a different light from anything I have seen before.’ His -respectable friends often deplored what seemed to them a depraved taste -for low company, but, as his best friend in Dumfries explained, it was -not the lowness of the company that attracted him; his companions were -of ‘low ranks, but men of talent and humour’. It was the colour of such -company, its shrewdness, its reckless wit, and its unashamed gusto -for life that made Burns prefer it to the drab respectability of the -church-going bourgeoisie. - -Crude humanity, however, was not the only thing Burns studied at -Kirkoswald. He encountered some new books as well. Thomson’s _Seasons_ -introduced him to the chief Scottish poet of the century who had made -his reputation by writing in standard English; Shenstone’s ‘Elegies’ -and ‘The Schoolmistress’ initiated him into the poetry of sentiment, -and the Spenserian stanza of the latter gave him the verse-form for -‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’. In reading these poets, however, he was -merely extending an acquaintance already made through the specimens in -Arthur Masson. His prose reading opened a different world. Novels were -not to be found in the stricter Presbyterian homes, so _Pamela_, an odd -volume of _Ferdinand Count Fathom_, and above all Mackenzie’s _The Man -of Feeling_, were a vivid experience. Nothing in his previous training -had inoculated him against the virus of sentimentality; exposed to its -most extreme form, he was infected for life. This, the lad no doubt -said to himself, was the way persons of superior sensitivity looked -upon life; very well, he could prove that his sensibility was equal -to theirs. At the first opportunity he bought a copy of _The Man of -Feeling_ and carried it with him everywhere until he wore it out. - -Had Burns known more of literature and of the world he would have been -able to take Mackenzie’s sentiment at the proper discount. Then the -book’s influence might have been good. It might gently have corrected -the harshness of his peasant background, as the literature of sentiment -in general ameliorated the brutality of the eighteenth-century world. -As it was, the book set up a preposterous ideal which divided Burns’s -energies and sometimes vitiated his work. The crudities of peasant -life needed softening and elevating, but sentimentalism made many of -his efforts in this direction mawkish instead of humane. The poet who -portrayed an old farmer’s affection for a faithful mare was revealing -sentiment in the best sense of that much-abused word; the poet who -moralized over a ploughed-under weed was pumping up emotions such as -no real farmer ever felt. Hence it is no exaggeration to say that the -foundations for the weakest elements in his work, as well as for the -magnificent zest of ‘The Jolly Beggars’ and ‘Tam o’ Shanter’, were laid -at Kirkoswald. - -Burns was probably right in saying that he came home considerably -improved. But he was also discontented. Mount Oliphant seemed narrower -and drabber than ever after the colour of the smuggling village, and -he had become acutely conscious--thanks equally to Peggy Thomson and -to his tavern companions--of his own awkwardness. This consciousness -led him to his first overt act of rebellion. In ‘absolute defiance’ of -his father’s commands, he attended a country dancing school, to improve -his manners. William Burnes’s ‘Manual of Religious Belief’ indicates -a willingness to mitigate some of the sterner points of Presbyterian -theology, but he was in full agreement with the Kirk’s condemnation of -worldly amusements. Gilbert Burns, as well as some of his brother’s -biographers, tried to explain away the remark about defiance, and the -father may not have pressed the point too far when he saw that Robert’s -mind was made up. Undoubtedly, however, Burns was correctly describing -his own feelings at the time, and though the father sensibly accepted -the accomplished fact and later allowed his other children to learn -dancing he thenceforth regarded his eldest son’s conduct with suspicion -and concern. - -On leaving Kirkoswald Burns had undertaken to carry on a literary -correspondence with some of his schoolfellows. He was bent on improving -his powers of expression and acquiring a literary style. But the -medium he selected was prose. Probably in retrospect he exaggerated -the actual extent of this correspondence--it is hard to believe that -‘every post’ brought him as many letters as if he had been a merchant, -or that he could have paid the postage if it had. The few surviving -specimens are quite enough. The poet’s uncle had once set out to buy -one of the manuals of letter-writing which supply models for most of -the imaginable contingencies of human life; he brought home instead -‘a collection of letters by the Wits of Queen Ann’s reign’. The exact -volume has never been identified, though Burns’s subsequent quotations -show that it included letters of Pope, Bolingbroke, and Swift. But the -eighteenth century, until Boswell taught it better, did not publish -really familiar letters. Such collections as Pope helped to bring out -were really composed of brief essays. Personal opinion was subdued; -personal news was deleted. The ‘unbridled effusions’ which make the -charm of familiar letters were suppressed. On such unfortunate models, -almost as stiff as Elizabeth Rowe’s ‘Letters Moral and Entertaining’ -which he had found in his Masson, Burns set to work. The result was -the same as when he encountered _The Man of Feeling_. A youth bred -among literate people would have realized intuitively that these models -showed only one side of letter-writing. Burns, with no other standards -to measure them by, took them as the whole of the law and prophets, -and shaped his epistolary style accordingly. His ear, attuned to the -subtlest modulations of poetry, remained always deaf to the quieter -graces of prose: when Dugald Stewart commended the simplicity of -Franklin’s writing, Burns could see nothing in it, ‘when compared with -the point, and antithesis, and quaintness of _Junius_.’ - -Those who have judged Burns adversely as a letter-writer would have -still more grounds for their criticism had more letters survived like -the few to William Niven and Thomas Orr. These country youths admired -Burns’s solemn analyses of Pride and Courage and his exhortations to -be content with poverty; so, unfortunately, did the better-educated -friends of his later life. The letters which he transcribed for Lady -Harriet Don in 1787 and for Robert Riddell in 1791-93 belonged to -the same school of prose as his earliest epistles to Niven. Burns -would never have thought of making, nor his friends of asking for, -transcripts of the admirable discussions of Scottish song which he sent -to George Thomson, nor of his easier letters to John Ballantine and -Mrs. Dunlop. No epistolary Robert Fergusson ever came into his hands to -show him the way to a conversational style. When he wrote easy prose it -was in spite of his models and because he had something to say which -really demanded saying. - -When the family at last escaped from Mount Oliphant in 1777 Burns was -eighteen, the age at which Chatterton, seven years before, had taken -his own life. But Burns’s self-education was a much slower process than -Chatterton’s. At eighteen he was still an awkward rustic, with all -his intellectual and artistic powers still to find. The most positive -result of the long ordeal at Mount Oliphant--apart from its injuries -to his health--had been the building up of a strong sense of family -loyalty. William Burnes had made every sacrifice to keep his family -together, and the feeling that this was a primary obligation had been -deeply impressed on his son. For the moment their prospects seemed -hopeful. The father had managed to lease the larger farm of Lochlie -near Tarbolton, and had again obtained from his landlord a cash advance -for stock and improvements. But again Burnes was paying the penalty of -his desperately independent character. For Lochlie’s hundred and thirty -acres of sour clay--so sour that the lease provided for two separate -applications of lime at the rate of 400 bushels to an acre--its -putative owner, David M’Lure, set a rental of £130. It was a ruinous -bargain which broke William Burnes’s spirit, helped to kill him, and -gave his children some first-hand acquaintance with the chicanery of -the law. - -On Burns the first effect of the removal to Lochlie was social. The -farm was within easy reach of Tarbolton village, where he found the -companionship his nature craved. Of his friends at Mount Oliphant -James Candlish’s is the only name that has not perished; those of the -Tarbolton cronies are enshrined in both verse and prose. For the first -couple of years the records are almost blank. By his own testimony, -and Gilbert’s, he was constantly falling tempestuously in love, -usually with girls of his own rank, or below it, for ‘he had always -a particular jealousy of people who were richer than himself, or who -had more consequence in life’. His imagination could always endow any -girl to whom he was attracted with a plentiful stock of charms which -bystanders often failed to perceive. His ready pen, moreover, was -constantly at the service of his less fluent friends who sought his aid -in composing their love-letters, and he ‘felt as much pleasure at being -in the secret of half the amours in the parish, as ever did Premier -at knowing the intrigues of half the courts of Europe.’ But Gilbert’s -testimony corroborates his own statement that none of these early -affairs passed the bounds of decorum. The fervours which he had first -experienced when reaping with Nellie Kilpatrick at the age of fifteen -were growing stronger and more clearly defined, but they were still -adolescent. - -This adolescent Burns figures also in the proceedings of the Tarbolton -Bachelors’ Club, a social and debating society which he and a few -friends organized in the autumn of 1780. Its fragmentary records show -the youths arguing such windy topics as Burns had discussed with Niven -five years before, but with a more direct application to his own -walk of life. E. g., ‘Whether is the savage man or the peasant of a -civilized country, in the most happy situation?’ ‘Whether is a young -man of the lower ranks of life likeliest to be happy who has got a good -education, and his mind well informed, or he who has just the education -and information of those around him?’ ‘Whether between friends, who -have no reason to doubt each other’s friendship, there should be any -reserve?’ Such topics point to Burns as their propounder, as do some of -the Club’s rules. The one which barred religious topics was doubtless -in the interest of peace, but Burns’s hand is evident in the tenth and -last: - - ‘Every man proper for a member of this society must have a frank, - honest, open heart; above anything dirty or mean; and must be a - professed lover of one or more of the female sex. No haughty, - self-conceited person, who looks upon himself as superior to the rest - of the club, and especially no mean-spirited, worldly mortal, whose - only will is to heap up money, shall on any pretence whatever be - admitted....’ - -Indecorum of language was likewise barred, and clerical biographers -in discussing these rules have left the impression that the Club was -a kind of Y.M.C.A. From what we know of peasant life in Scotland and -of the adolescent male everywhere, it is possible that the biographers -were mistaken. Whatever his conduct in 1780, Burns was soon applying -the tenth rule in no platonic or idealistic sense. - -Nevertheless the Club played an important part in developing his -powers. Besides giving him an audience for his ideas it showed him -that he could dominate his audience. Thenceforward Burns took the lead -in any social group where he was intimate; his companions, re-echoing -his wit, believed that they shared it and even convinced him that they -did. The roster of his friends includes many wholly commonplace people -like John Richmond and Robert Ainslie who shone only by reflected -light, but whose satellite nature Burns was quite unaware of at the -time. Moreover, the Club gave him almost his first experience of the -wine of applause, and he found it a heady vintage. - -Among the Tarbolton Bachelors was David Sillar--not a charter member of -the Club, but admitted to it early in 1781. A year younger than Burns, -Sillar, under his friend’s inspiration, produced a few commonplace -poems which gave Burns the excuse for hailing him as brother poet. -Sillar had a certain gift for characterization in prose; he described -Tarbolton townsfolk as ‘uncontaminated by reading, conversation, -or reflection’, and left the most vivid extant picture of Burns on -the threshold of manhood. Burns was beginning to reveal the playboy -elements in his nature--that desire above all things to be conspicuous -which he shared with such very different geniuses as Sir Walter Scott, -Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Bernard Shaw. In a day when strict -Presbyterians still cropped their hair, after the fashion which in the -previous century had earned them the name of Roundheads, Burns let his -grow long and wore it in a queue--‘the only tied hair in the parish’. -When everyone else was wearing plaids of ordinary shepherd’s gray, -Burns sported one of dead-leaf colour. And since the uncontaminated -parishioners of Tarbolton were orthodox Old Lights Burns acquired easy -notoriety by setting up as a heretic. - -Throughout his life Burns managed always to acquire a maximum of -ill-repute with a minimum of actual transgression. It was not so much -that he was conspicuously sinful as that he sinned conspicuously. -Sometimes the conspicuousness was mere ill-luck. A fair portion, for -instance, of the Edinburgh gossip which clung to his name may well have -originated in the fact that both the servant girls with whom he had -relations in the city brought legal action against him--a consequence -he could scarcely have foreseen. On the other hand, his desire to -startle the parish frequently bore fruit in suspicions and enmities -impossible to live down. G. K. Chesterton once advised the village -genius who wants to conquer something fundamentally and symbolically -hostile and also very strong, not to come up to London but to stay at -home and have a row with the rector. This was precisely what Burns did. -The New Light doctrines which soft-pedalled such Calvinistic dogmas as -predestination had already conquered Edinburgh and Glasgow and were -beginning to invade the provinces. In any case Burns’s saturation -in the sentimentalism of Mackenzie and Sterne would have made him -receptive to the New Light emphasis on Benevolence and the Moral Sense. -But when the congeniality of the new doctrines was joined with an -opportunity to startle his neighbours the combination was irresistible. -He began, he says, to debate theology with such heat and indiscretion -as to raise a cry of heresy which persisted in Tarbolton and Mauchline -as long as he remained there. An anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, pictures -him in the kirkyard between services, expounding heretical doctrines -with such vigour as to elicit hisses and cries of ‘Shame!’ from his -auditors. At least the story is true in spirit. Burns was determined to -be conspicuous, even if it meant hisses instead of applause. - -Masonic affiliations, which after his return from Irvine supplanted -the Bachelors’ Club, gave him still another chance to indulge both -his social instincts and his sympathies with liberal thought. A rural -lodge like St. James’s at Tarbolton was, to be sure, no such centre of -political liberalism as were the Masonic lodges of the Continent during -the later eighteenth century. The chief activity, in fact, of most of -the Scottish lodges seems to have been convivial, with the additional -feature, lacking in the ordinary social club, that the members were -pledged to help their fellows in sickness or distress. Nevertheless the -knowledge that brother Masons in England and abroad were disseminating -ideas which challenged absolutism in government and religion must have -reached even village youths in Tarbolton. In Scotland, moreover, the -ritual which dignified the childish thrill of membership in a secret -organization gave Freemasonry an emotional appeal which the drab -services of the Kirk and the narrow routine of every day lacked. From -the time when he joined St. James’s Lodge, about 1782, until after his -sojourn in Edinburgh, Burns took his Masonic duties with the utmost -seriousness. He helped to put the struggling and almost bankrupt lodge -on its feet; from 1784 to 1787 he was its Depute Master. In Edinburgh -he continued his affiliations, and perhaps the highest moment of all -his early triumphal progress in the capital came at the meeting of the -Grand Lodge of Scotland on January 13, 1787, when the Grand Master gave -the toast, ‘Caledonia, and Caledonia’s Bard, brother Burns!’ It is -idle to conjecture if the coolness which followed his first acclaim in -Edinburgh reached into Masonic circles; certainly the poet’s interest -in the craft waned in his later years. His letters from Ellisland -and Dumfries scarcely mention it, except when he was in trouble and -wanted Robert Graham to help him as a Mason as well as a friend. He -duly affiliated himself with the Dumfries lodge, and became its Senior -Warden, but if silence means anything the zest was gone. - -The Masonic fellowship of course was male, but Burns was not -forgetting his obligations as a member of the Bachelors’ Club. His -own statements and Gilbert’s, already quoted, show a succession -of passing infatuations with various girls whose names, even, are -doubtful, and of whose personalities the most ardent legend-mongers -can scarcely summon up a wraith. By comparison with such shadows as -Anne Rankine and Mary Morison, even Nellie Kilpatrick who stirred the -poet’s blood for a single harvest, and Peggy Thomson, who overset his -trigonometry at Kirkoswald, are three-dimensional. The one figure who -half emerges from the shadows is Alison (or Ellison) Begbie. Burns met -her in 1780 or 1781, but understanding of the matter is not clarified -by the possibility that some of the five letters supposed to have -been addressed to her may really be drafts of the love-letters he -frequently wrote for his friends. Assuming them all to be Alison’s, -they prove mainly that Burns had not yet learned much about women. If -ever farm-lass was wooed in such stilted and temperate phrases it is -pretty certain that she was not in this humour won. Burns’s intentions -were serious; he wanted to marry Alison. Unfortunately the intentions -made him serious too. He seemed afraid to commit himself in writing. -A bystander is not surprised that Alison refused the man who told her -that her company never gave him those giddy raptures so much talked of -among lovers, and who announced that in his opinion married life was -only friendship in a more exalted degree. It did surprise Burns. Indeed -the shock of it led him subsequently to charge her with having jilted -him, a difficult feat when his own letters prove she had never accepted -him. No doubt she had merely employed the ancient technique of mild and -noncommittal encouragement while she was making up her mind. Burns had -prided himself on his skill in letter-writing and on his address with -women. To be flatly rejected the first time he made a serious proposal -upset him for several months. It also completed his sentimental -education. Thereafter, until he met Clarinda, he knew better than to do -his courting by post. - -But friendships with men and women, though they helped him momentarily -to escape his blue devils, could not obscure the problem of his own -and his family’s future. He still lacked an aim. Conscious of more -than average powers in himself, he had no purpose to which to direct -them. Moreover, the years at Lochlie were bringing him for the first -time to a realization of the workings of the larger economic laws. -The American War was ruining the West of Scotland. Half its market -for manufactured goods was closed; its exports to the West Indies -were being raided by American privateers. Just before the war an -over-expanded bank had failed, dragging down with it half the gentlemen -in Ayrshire and leaving a trail of wreckage which was not wholly -obliterated for a couple of decades. Even the wartime demand for farm -produce was no help when multitudes of jobless artisans could not -pay the high prices which at best would scarcely have yielded a fair -return on the over-capitalized land. M’Lure, the landlord of Lochlie, -was heavily mortgaged to the defunct bank. Hard pressed for cash, he -tried to extort from his tenants more than was his due. William Burnes -resisted, and became involved in litigation which followed him to the -grave. In similar circumstances at Mount Oliphant Burns had seen merely -a personal situation in which a villainous factor was demanding more -rent than the family could pay. Now he began to realize that a man may -be frugal and diligent in his business, and yet be destroyed by forces -which he did not start and was powerless to control. - -As early as 1780 Burns had experimented at growing flax of his own on -a few acres of land subleased from his father; later he won a prize -for his seed. His success led him in 1781 to go to Irvine to learn -the trade of flax-dressing. Some consequences of that venture belong -in the next chapter; educationally the results, like those of so many -youthful experiences, were mainly negative. His distaste for the work, -and its ill effect on his health, left him more aimless than before. He -concluded that he was unfit for the world of business, and where he had -formerly yearned for some chance of advancement he now decided that he -was destined to be only a looker-on at life. All that restrained him -from complete shiftlessness was his sense of responsibility for his -family. - -Intellectually, that sense was keener and more insistent than ever, -but now for the first time it was in direct conflict with a storm of -emotions. Burns had come home empty-handed as the prodigal, to find -his father visibly sinking under the united effects of worry and -tuberculosis. It was plain that even if his contest with his landlord -should be decided in his favour he would never be fit to undertake -another farm. By the beginning of 1783 the whole family, including -William Burnes, realized that death was at best a matter of months. -M’Lure the landlord realized it too, and such scenes as had accompanied -the reading of the factor’s letters at Mount Oliphant were re-enacted -at Lochlie with triple poignance. The children were old enough this -time to understand the whole meaning of the affair; their father was a -broken man, and where the factor had merely threatened legal action, -M’Lure was taking it. The outcome of the case and the practical means -whereby Gavin Hamilton helped the family through the crisis will be -told later; its emotional impact on Burns himself, coming as it did on -the heels of his own failure at business, could hardly be overstated. -He saw his father’s lifetime of struggle for independence ending in -defeat and despair. Recollection of Mount Oliphant and Lochlie never -ceased to haunt his own ventures as a farmer, and helped to damn them. -Fear and hatred of one’s economic position are seldom the heralds of -success. - -Burns’s whole nature, in fact, was beginning to cry out against the -life he was expected to lead. Not even the loyally accepted burden -laid upon him from his father’s weakening hands could hold him steady. -He had come back from Irvine, as before from Kirkoswald, incapable of -fitting again into the narrow pattern of the life he had lived before -his departure. He had outgrown his mould. The dying father noted with -concern that his son was spending longer hours with wilder companions, -and displaying a new aggressiveness and assurance in his manner of -speaking with women. Nevertheless the shadow of the old man’s authority -was still enough, when reinforced by the desperate need of securing -the future of the family, to inhibit the full expression of the new -tendencies. Gilbert’s testimony is explicit. At Lochlie he and Robert -were both allowed the usual labourer’s wage of £7 a year, against which -was charged the value of every piece of clothing manufactured at home. -Neither there nor at Mossgiel did Robert’s expenditures exceed this -frugal sum. It was extravagance of emotion, of speech and conduct, not -of expense, that beset the poet. - -On his deathbed, on February 13, 1784, William Burnes muttered that -there was one member of his family for whose future conduct he feared, -and Robert, in tears, took the admonition to himself. Hardly was the -family settled at Mossgiel, after some strictly legal dodging which -must have increased the poet’s inward distaste for the whole business, -when the traits his father had dreaded began their full play. Though -he entered on his responsibilities as head of the family with the -best of resolutions, his heart was not in the undertaking. He read -farming books, calculated crops, and attended markets, but his mind -was elsewhere. According to his own account, he lost interest in the -work because of two successive crop-failures, the first owing to bad -seed and the second to a wet harvest. But this was an excuse, not -an explanation. The real reasons lay within himself. They were his -passions and his art. - -His father’s death had removed the last check upon social indulgence. -Always shunning the solitude which produced brooding melancholy, he -had found in Mauchline a new and gayer set of cronies whose company -was more congenial than that of his family in the crowded cottage -at Mossgiel. More and more of his time was spent in the village -taverns--not for drunkenness, but for the pleasure of sharing the -hilarity of careless youths and the uninhibited wit of older ‘men -of talent and humour’ like his neighbour John Rankine. The rigidly -righteous began to frown on the young farmer whose reckless sallies -were sure to provoke the wildest outbursts of laughter. And even at -Mossgiel there were distractions from a sober and godly life. The -household included a young servant-lass named Betty Paton, whose -charms, like those of most of Burns’s sweethearts, were mainly -physical. Within a few months of his father’s death Betty became -Burns’s mistress, and in May, 1785, bore his first child amid all the -accompaniments of a public scandal in the parish. - -Unpropitious though such beginnings were for a career as a tenant -farmer, they were relatively unimportant compared with the inner -compulsions arising from his discovery of his poetic vocation. Many -another young farmer had sowed his wild oats and then settled down to -rear a legitimate family and become an elder in the Kirk. For Burns -such a future had really ceased to be possible even before he left -Lochlie. In April, 1783, under the melancholy influence of his own -ill-health and his father’s dark prospects, he had begun to keep a -commonplace book with the avowed intention of some day showing the -world that a young ploughman, little indebted to scholastic education, -was nevertheless capable of rime and reason. When he started the book -his literary models were Shenstone, Mackenzie, and the folk-songs of -his country. At some time during the next year, however, the poems of -Robert Fergusson came into his hands. They roused him as Chapman’s -Homer roused Keats. For the first time he realized that the Scottish -dialect might be something more than a dying relic of the past. He -had been long acquainted with Allan Ramsay, but Ramsay belonged to -the primitive age before Scottish letters had been ennobled by such -geniuses as Henry Mackenzie, James Beattie, and John Home. Now he found -that Fergusson, only ten years older than himself, had returned to the -speech and the verse-forms of Ramsay. And Fergusson was no country -boy but an educated lawyer’s clerk bred in the Athens of the North. -Reading these poems Burns realized their vivid descriptions and their -wit--realized also that what Fergusson had done he could do as well, or -better. Mauchline parish offered as many themes for homely satire as -Edinburgh did. - -The theme ready to hand was ecclesiastical controversy. The -neighbourhood was ululating with disputes between Old Lights and New -Lights, and the leaders on both sides were behaving with the lack of -charity peculiar to Christians on the war-path. Moreover, Burns’s -landlord and friend, Gavin Hamilton, was in the thick of it, standing -trial before the Kirk Session on a charge of Sabbath-breaking. Two -neighbouring Old Light ministers--John Russell of Kilmarnock and -Alexander Moodie of Riccarton--chose this time for a quarrel over -parish boundaries, and conducted their holy row with the heat and -personal invective of a heresy-hunt. Burns improved the occasion by -composing ‘The Twa Herds’. Copying the poem in a disguised hand he -showed it to Hamilton, remarking with studied gravity that he had no -idea who the author was, but that he thought it pretty clever. Hamilton -thought so too. Copies were passed from hand to hand; the New Lights, -clergy as well as laity, received it with roars of applause; the Old -Lights were correspondingly furious. - -When Burns followed up ‘The Twa Herds’ with ‘The Holy Fair’, ‘The -Ordination’, and ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’, the applause redoubled, and so -did the enmity of the Old Lights. The man who challenges established -institutions to their face needs to be sure of his own position. -Burns’s indiscretion with Betty Paton not only left him wide open -to counter-attack but assured him of far more unpleasant notoriety -than ordinarily accompanied such lapses in peasant Scotland. It was -impossible to remain in the parish without submitting to the discipline -of the Kirk. Even at its mildest the ordeal of three successive -penitential appearances before Mauchline congregation would have been -intensely humiliating to a man as sensitively proud as Burns. But -a young bachelor’s slips from grace were not usually treated very -seriously except by the clergy and the Holy Willies. Had Burns been -otherwise in good standing in the community he would have been able to -go on much as before, but when the evidence of his breach of sexual -morality was augmented by his ill-fame as a derider of the church he -became, among all the more conservative members of the parish, little -better than an outcast. - -He may not have realized the full bitterness of the feeling against -him until his repudiation by the Armours in the spring of 1786, but he -realized enough. His reaction was as inevitable as the community’s had -been. If he was to be an outcast he would live up to his reputation. -Many of his biographers since, as well as many of his neighbours at -the time, have taken at face value the blatant pride in his ill-repute -which marks such poems as the ‘Epistle to John Rankine’. But this -was not part of his real nature; he was simply brazening out his -humiliation. The unco guid had decided that he was a dog with a bad -name. He would show them that they had underestimated his capacity to -shock them. That in the process he would make the parish too hot to -hold him was a consideration not likely to occur to him in the full -tide of his resentment. - -But if his conflict with the Kirk had brought him humiliation it had -also brought him the sense of power and the intoxication of applause. -He had long known that his conversational wit and fire could dominate -a knot of cronies. Now he had learned that he could write things which -stirred both the laughter and the deeper emotions of educated men as -well as of his social equals. The hostility of the Holy Willies was -even more inebriating than the applause of Gavin Hamilton and his -friends. Men do not hate unless they fear; the measure of his success -and power was the measure of the antagonism he had aroused. The youth -whose weakness it had always been to lack an aim had found one now. -His education was complete. Intimate observation and experience of a -small community had acquainted him with human nature, and had at last -roused him to realization of his own capacities and his true vocation. -His estimate of himself and his work, he later told John Moore, was -pretty nearly as high in 1785 as it was two years later, after all the -adulation of Edinburgh. All that he needed now was the opportunity to -display his talents on a larger stage. - - - - -III - -MEN - - -Burns entered on his manhood at Irvine in 1781. Before his ill-starred -venture as a flax-dresser he was an aimless and inarticulately -rebellious youth; after it, though he was still aimless for a time, -his rebellion against the narrow world of his origin was overt and -vocal. Yet even under the stimulus of Irvine he was long in finding his -proper speech. When he wrote the earliest of his extant letters, Burns, -already a man in years, was still a boy in mind. His self-conscious -disquisitions on such high-resounding themes as Pride and Courage mark -him as less mature at twenty-one than Chatterton was at sixteen; he -had passed the age at which Keats died before he began to say anything -worth heeding. At twenty-two, his vague aspirations momentarily -focussed on the idea of establishing himself in business as a necessary -prelude to matrimony, he made his sole attempt at living according to -the standards of a working-day world. Materially, the attempt was an -abject failure; spiritually, it set him on the direct road to realizing -himself. - -Knowledge of the material side of the Irvine partnership is limited -to what Burns himself told in his autobiographic letter, which is -not wholly reliable evidence. Not that Burns intentionally coloured -the facts. The safest rule in reading his letters is to take it for -granted that if he said a thing about himself it was true; if he -said a thing about someone else, he believed it to be true. But to -his passionate temperament and ‘skinless sensibility’ (the phrase is -his own) anyone through whom he suffered loss or humiliation became -almost automatically a villain of the blackest. Hence his charges that -Peacock, his Irvine partner, ‘was a scoundrel of the first water, who -made money by the mystery of thieving’, need not be taken literally. -Burns, a complete greenhorn at business, may possibly have been taken -in by an unscrupulous rascal, but it is equally possible that Burns -in retrospect blamed Peacock for a failure in which they were both -at fault. In any case, the business side of these months influenced -Burns’s future only as it convinced him of his unfitness for ‘the -little chicaning art of bargain-making’. What really mattered were the -new friends, and the new ideas of himself and his place in the world -inspired by these friends and by the introspection resulting from -ill-health. - -Chief of the new friends was the sailor, Richard Brown, whom Burns -looked up to as a junior schoolboy looks to the athletic senior. Brown -was about the poet’s age, but had all the worldly experience Burns -lacked. He was better educated than most seamen of his day, though -perhaps his story of having been patronized by a wealthy man who -promised to set him up in life was only another sailor’s yarn. He had -at any rate abilities of a sort. An incompetent man could not have -become the master of a West Indiaman while still in his twenties. But -in 1781 that promotion was still to win. Brown just then was down on -his luck. His ship had recently been captured by an American privateer, -and he had been put ashore on the coast of Connaught with nothing but -his life and the clothes he wore. Nevertheless the friendship with -Burns probably began with something of patronage on Brown’s part. -The experienced, far-travelled, and distinctly hard-boiled sailor -was interested in the awkward, stoop-shouldered country lad who in -company alternated between sullen silence and--if he felt himself at -ease--unusually vivid and copious speech. Obviously Brown realized -that there was something in him; obviously also he took pleasure in -enlightening him as to the ways of the world. Burns saw in Brown ‘every -noble, manly virtue’ and strove to imitate him. Burns was already -proud; Brown taught his pride to flow in proper channels--whatever -that may mean. But Brown also was the only man the poet ever met who -was a bigger fool than himself where women were concerned. The various -goddesses by whom Burns’s tinder heart was continually lighted up still -roused a hobbledehoy calf-love, as adolescent as his hero-worship -of the sailor. Brown taught him that direct action might usually be -counted on to bring results, and here, as Burns later admitted, the -friendship did him a mischief. - -Yet Brown was something more than a hard-boiled sailor initiating a -green youngster. One Sunday afternoon the pair took a walking trip to -Eglinton Wood, where under the inspiring influence of a spot associated -with the memory of Sir William Wallace Burns confided to his mentor -that he occasionally tried to write poetry. He was already poet enough -to have a copy in his pocket. Brown listened, and declared that verses -of such merit ought to be sent to a magazine. It was actually this, -Burns recorded long afterwards, that first gave him the idea that he -might amount to something as a poet. It was one thing to have one’s -verses praised by a rural maiden like Nellie Kilpatrick or by one’s own -admiring family; it was quite another to have them endorsed by a man of -the world. Unfortunately Burns failed to name the poem Brown commended. -At a guess it may well have been the two somewhat bawdy stanzas -beginning ‘I murder hate by field or flood’, Andrew Dunlop’s manuscript -of which was headed, ‘On the great Recruiting in the year 17-- during -the American war’. Burns had no motive for mystifying Dunlop; hence -the date of these stanzas can scarcely be later than 1781, and Brown -would have been more likely to applaud such lines than the conventional -religious pieces more or less contemporary with them. - -The good as well as the ill of Brown’s friendship belongs to the six or -eight months at Irvine. If the friends met during the next four or five -years, no references to their intercourse survive. When the Kilmarnock -_Poems_ were published, Brown received the only inscribed presentation -copy on record, and in December, 1787, the two began a correspondence -which lasted for a couple of years in the intervals of Brown’s voyages. -Their only recorded meeting, however, was in Glasgow in February, 1788, -when the poet told Brown all about Jean Armour. Burns’s last letter, -in November, 1789, in reply to a complaint about his silence, is as -cordial as ever, yet the friendship ended. According to tradition, -Burns’s charge about Brown’s moral influence had reached the sailor, -now a married man with a steadily improving position to maintain and -far from eager to be reminded that he had heard the chimes at midnight. -After Brown’s death, the presentation copy was found hidden away in -the back of an old sideboard. The sailor was not the only friend who -in later years wanted to live down his associations with the poet. -The descendants of John Wilson concealed for more than a century the -fact that instead of resenting ‘Death and Dr. Hornbook’ he appealed to -Burns for help when his position as schoolmaster at Tarbolton became -intolerable. On the other hand, James Humphry of Mauchline continued -till his dying day to boast that he was ‘Burns’s bletherin’ bitch’. - -During the same months in which Brown was stirring Burns to a new -self-confidence his health was producing opposite effects. Throughout -his life his diseased heart reacted unfavourably to nervous stress; the -Irvine experience was the first of many. Realization of his bad bargain -with Peacock combined with the unaccustomed strain of dusty indoor -labour to bring on a period of ‘hypochondria’--in other words, nervous -depression resulting from defective heart-action. Its tangible results -were such lachrymose verses as the ‘Prayer in the Prospect of Death’ -and the letter to his father in which he announces that he is ‘quite -transported at the thought that ere long, perhaps very soon, I shall -bid an eternal adiew to all the pains, and uneasiness, and disquietudes -of this weary life; for I assure you I am heartily tired of it.’ The -letter is not merely morbid, it is adolescent; and Mrs. Carswell has -noted that the solemn announcement that ‘I am not formed for the bustle -of the busy nor the flutter of the Gay’ is cribbed verbatim from _The -Man of Feeling_. William Burnes, however, probably regarded it as -admirable proof that his son was beginning to take serious views of -religion and life. In any case it represents only a passing mood of -ill-health. The important fact about the Irvine days is that Burns was -considering seriously his own abilities and his future position. - -The partnership had at least the merit of a dramatic and even -spectacular finish. A New Year’s Eve celebration, whatever it may have -done for Burns, brought his partner and his wife to such a state of -drunkenness that they knocked over a lamp and set fire to the shop. -The place was completely burned out, and after a month or two Burns -returned to Lochlie poorer than he went, but with a rich store of -experiences, a new outlook on life, and a mature confidence in himself -which he had never before possessed. But he still lacked an aim. For -another four years the pride which Brown had taught to flow in proper -channels was still to display itself mainly in obscure rebellion -against his lot in life, and in anything but obscure defiance of the -unco guid. - -The situation confronting him at home would in any event have matured -him, but without Irvine it might have been in a different way. Firmly -convinced as always of his own justice and rectitude--a conviction -which he imparted with equal vigour to his eldest son--William Burnes -was closing his long series of misfortunes in a violent contest with -his landlord, David M’Lure. The dispute had begun in a difference -over their respective shares of the expenses of liming and fencing -the farm and erecting new buildings. Pending arbitration of the case, -William Burnes had held up payment of his rent. In September, 1782, the -matter was submitted to James Grieve of Boghead and Charles Norval of -Coilsfield--chosen respectively by M’Lure and Burnes--for adjudication. -When they were unable to agree, John Hamilton of Sundrum was chosen as -‘Oversman’ or referee. Not until August, 1783, did Hamilton complete -his analysis of the accounts and hand down his decision, which was that -of £775 claimed by M’Lure, £543 was offset by credits for improvements -made by Burnes, part payments on rent, and other items. But before this -decision was rendered M’Lure, whose estates were heavily mortgaged to -the defunct Douglas and Heron Bank, and who desperately needed cash, -had tried to force payment by entering a sequestration on the stock -and crops of Lochlie. By the time John Hamilton reported, M’Lure was so -deep in debt that it was uncertain whether the rent belonged to him or -to his creditors. Thereupon indomitable William Burnes carried the case -to the Court of Session at Edinburgh. His first petition being thrown -out on a technicality, he renewed it, and at last, on January 27, 1784, -less than three weeks before his death, won his case. He had had the -cash on hand to deposit with the court, when he made his appeal, the -whole amount due; the decision absolved him of further responsibility -in the matter, and summoned the various claimants to bring in their -claims for adjudication. William Burnes had vindicated himself; his -view of his obligations had been upheld by the highest court in the -land. All that it had cost him was the last of his money and the last -of his strength. He was not an old man, but the long struggle for -livelihood, culminating in the protracted lawsuit, made him the easier -prey to tuberculosis. His conviction of his own rightness, like his -irascibility, grew stronger as his body weakened, and mingled with his -wrath at M’Lure was anxiety, bluntly expressed, over Robert’s growing -defiance of Presbyterian decorum. - -In calmer circumstances, his father’s displeasure would have weighed -heavily on the poet’s mind, but now he was looking beyond it. Watching -their father’s sinking health, the children were consulting with -each other about their future. The end of Lochlie could not be long -delayed: death would evict them, because after the litigation none -of the claimants to the property was likely to give them a renewal of -the lease. Though Robert subsequently gave Gilbert the credit of being -a full partner in the next undertaking, he probably was not. It is -difficult to imagine the timid and subservient Gilbert taking the lead -in anything. Not long after returning from Irvine Burns had made the -acquaintance of a prosperous Mauchline lawyer named Gavin Hamilton, who -may have been attracted to the young farmer by reports of his outspoken -ridicule of the Old Lights in the Kirk. Hamilton being also a Mason, -they doubtless met first in the fellowship of square and compass. The -lawyer, already in hot water with his more orthodox neighbours, may -also have realized the potential value of Burns’s wit in the impending -contests, but whatever his motives it was Hamilton who suggested to -William Burnes’s children a practical and legal way out of their -trouble. - -Several years before, Hamilton had rented Mossgiel farm, about three -miles from Mauchline, and had rebuilt the cottage as a country retreat. -The plan of being gentleman farmer as well as lawyer had palled, and -Hamilton now offered to sublet Mossgiel to Robert and Gilbert at a -lower rental--£90 a year for 118 acres--than they were paying at -Lochlie. The lease was quietly signed at Martinmas, 1783, it being -apparent by that time that William Burnes had not many weeks to live. -Secrecy was necessary; the Court of Session had not yet rendered its -decision, and their action, if it became known, might be unfavourably -construed. Whatever small savings had not gone for legal expenses were -invested in the new enterprise, and Hamilton pointed out a loop-hole -through which the children might salvage something after their father’s -death. Robert and Gilbert were already credited with the regular wages -of labourers. Let the other children also get themselves ranked as -employees on the farm. Then they could enter claims for unpaid wages -against their father’s estate, thereby becoming preferred creditors -who must be paid in full before M’Lure or his mortgagors got anything. -The scheme worked. Enough was saved from the wreck to enable the -family, shaken and desperately poor--when the youngest boy, John, died -in November, 1785, they could not raise the few shillings to pay for -the best mortcloth at his funeral--to re-establish their household at -Mossgiel, intact except for its head. - -The new head was Robert, and in the months that followed his father’s -death the full results of his Irvine lessons showed for the first -time. In the two intervening years he had been too much oppressed with -labour and anxiety to have time or inclination to show the new spirit -in all its fullness, though he had shown enough to disturb his father. -Now he was free, and the fruits of his freedom were varied and not -always edifying. The earnest young debater of the Tarbolton Bachelors’ -Club and the self-conscious author of essay-letters gave place to Rab -Mossgiel. Burns became the focus for a group of reckless youngsters, -most of them younger than himself, who looked up to him much as he had -looked up to Richard Brown three years before. Foremost in the group -were John Richmond and James Smith, both of them full of the animal -high spirits which so often disguise the basic commonplaceness of -young minds. Along with Burns they set out to scandalize the orthodox, -and succeeded. By the end of 1785 Richmond and Smith, like Burns, had -mounted the cutty-stool for fornication, and Richmond had fled from the -turmoil to the comparative sanctuary of an Edinburgh lawyer’s office. - -These cronies are chiefly noteworthy as evidence of Burns’s still -uncritical mind. As with Bob Ainslie later, there was really nothing -to them except youthful exuberance. Their laughter was the ready -chorus for Burns’s wit; his sparkle made them shine with a reflected -light to which they actually contributed little. By comparison the -poor poetaster, Davie Sillar of the Tarbolton Bachelors, was almost -a genius. In his characterization of Tarbolton townsfolk Sillar -left behind him at least one quotable phrase, which is more than -any of the Mauchline group did. They cannot be charged with leading -Burns astray--if any leading was needed Burns supplied it--and their -biographical importance is negligible except as they gave him an -outlet for confidences which might not otherwise have been recorded. -When Burns went to Edinburgh he lodged with Richmond during his first -winter; during the second winter Richmond was in Mauchline a good part -of the time. Burns’s last extant letters to him reveal some details -about Jean Armour and her children, but lack the enthusiasm of the ones -written in 1786. Smith left Mauchline to engage in calico-printing -at Linlithgow. Failing there, he fled to the West Indies and died -obscurely, as Burns came so near doing. Both friendships were spent -and empty before the correspondence closed. The contrast between the -mediocre abilities of the two men and the quality of the poetry they -evoked from Burns is even more remarkable than the disparity between -the illiterate farm-lasses of Tarbolton and Mauchline and the lyrics -Burns addressed to them. - -By the time he was twenty-six Burns’s status among people of his -own rank was firmly established. He was the unquestioned leader of -the reckless young; the welcome companion of ribald and unorthodox -elders. The attitude toward him of the staid and sober ranged from sad -head-shaking to violent denunciation. With people of rank above his -own, however, he was still uneasy. Hamilton was probably the first man -of the professional class with whom he formed a genuine friendship. -John Mackenzie, the Mauchline surgeon who attended William Burnes in -his last illness, remembered that on first visiting Lochlie he found -Gilbert frank, modest, well-informed, and communicative, the father -revealing the remains of an able mind beneath the cloud of illness -and distress, and the mother quiet, sagacious, and self-possessed. -But Burns sat glowering in a dark corner, ‘distant, suspicious, and -without any wish to interest or please’; scrutinizing Mackenzie and -obviously prepared to resent any display of superiority or patronage. -As the doctor showed himself affable Burns gradually thawed. Though -the written records of the friendship are meagre, Burns plainly liked -and trusted Mackenzie, and Mackenzie reciprocated. From the time of -their first meeting, the doctor declared, ‘I took a lively interest in -Robert Burns, and, before I was acquainted with his poetical power, I -perceived that he possessed very great mental abilities, an uncommon, -fertile and lively imagination, a thorough acquaintance with many -of our Scottish poets, and an enthusiastic admiration of Ramsay and -Fergusson. I have always thought that no person could have a just idea -of the extent of Burns’s talents who had not an opportunity to hear him -converse. His discrimination of character was great beyond that of any -person I ever knew....’ The surgeon introduced Burns as a poet to his -own friend and patron, Sir John Whitefoord, who had previously known -of the young farmer only as an earnest member of St. James’s Lodge; -he also gave an introduction to Captain Andrew Erskine of Edinburgh, -Boswell’s friend, and claimed to have been the first to bring the -Kilmarnock _Poems_ to the attention of Hugh Blair. It was to Mackenzie -and not to Gavin Hamilton that Burns turned for very practical help in -the stormy weeks preceding his final acknowledgement of his marriage -to Jean Armour, and when Mackenzie provided Jean and her lover with -quarters in his own house he must have faced a weight of criticism -from the embattled saints and gossips of the village that would have -daunted many a man with a professional status to maintain. - -The pride which Richard Brown had taught to flow in proper channels -was becoming all the more touchy as Burns’s confidence in himself -increased. Sure of himself now among his equals, he was still -resentfully helpless when superiors rubbed in their superiority. He had -come as far as he could in his merely social capacity; what carried -him the rest of the way was his poetry. Here Gavin Hamilton more or -less unwittingly took the lead in introducing Burns to a new world. -The Kirk Session of Mauchline, seeking to re-establish the old-time -rigours of the Scottish Sabbath, had decided for once to make an -example of a prominent citizen instead of an obscure one. Accordingly -in the summer of 1784 Hamilton was summoned to stand trial for various -ecclesiastical crimes such as absenting himself from church, habitually -neglecting family worship, and causing a servant to dig new potatoes on -a Sunday. On being convicted, Hamilton promptly appealed his case to -the Presbytery of Ayr, and ultimately won it. How Burns intervened with -‘The Twa Herds’ has already been told. His authorship of that poem and -its successors was soon avowed as the manuscripts passed from hand to -New Light hand amid roars of Homeric laughter. People and institutions -accustomed to taking themselves and being taken by others with the most -intense seriousness are helpless in the face of mirth. Burns had found -the one weapon which the orthodox could not withstand, though they -could, and did, revenge themselves on the author of their humiliation. -The fury generated by his satires did as much as, or more than, the -odium of his personal sins to make Mauchline so unbearable that by 1786 -Burns was ready to flee to Jamaica. - -But if his satires made the village too hot for him they were also the -direct means of enabling him to escape both from the village and from -the ranks of the peasantry. One of the first friends to whom Hamilton -showed ‘The Twa Herds’ was another lawyer, Robert Aiken of Ayr, who -conducted and won Hamilton’s case before the Presbytery. Hamilton, -apart from the conviviality almost inseparable from a man of his -profession in eighteenth-century Scotland, was cool and businesslike. -Aiken was emotional and enthusiastic, a good forensic reader and -speaker, and an easy prey to sentiment. Pathos, in life or in a poem, -suffused his eyes with tears and set the buttons popping on his tight -waistcoat. But, like the more famous Man of Feeling, Henry Mackenzie, -Aiken seldom in daily life permitted sentiment to overcloud common -sense. Along with his fellow townsman, John Ballantine the banker, the -lawyer soon became the poet’s confidant and chief literary adviser. -‘Orator Bob’ lost no opportunity of reading his young friend’s verses -aloud, with such expression that Burns later declared he had never -fully appreciated his own work until he heard Aiken read it. As the -poet’s troubles thickened in the early months of 1786 it was with Aiken -and Ballantine that he discussed both his plans for emigration and -his arrangements for publishing his poems, their decision as to what -ought to be included in the Kilmarnock volume apparently being final. -Though Aiken’s action, as James Armour’s legal adviser, in cancelling -whatever ‘lines’ Burns had given Jean, caused a momentary chill, the -lawyer soon proved that his professional conduct did not interfere -with his private friendships. He obtained 145 subscriptions for the -Kilmarnock _Poems_--nearly one-fourth of the entire edition. Even amid -the excitement of his first dazzling fame in Edinburgh Burns recalled -with a glow of affection the kindly patronage of Aiken and Ballantine, -and long after he had quitted Ayrshire forever he continued from time -to time to send them new poems which he thought they might like. As -late as 1791 he was still gratefully remembering Ballantine’s part -in handing him ‘up to the “Court of the Gentiles” in the temple of -Fame’--a figure of speech which combined neatness and literal accuracy. -It was only to the outer court--that of the bourgeoisie and minor -gentry--that Aiken and Ballantine were able to conduct him. - -The association with Hamilton fared worse. Poetry, except in the form -of humour and satire, did not, it would seem, appeal to Hamilton as it -did to Aiken, and between him and Burns was always the barrier of their -business relation as landlord and tenant. Ultimately, indeed, a matter -of business estranged them. In the spring of 1788, nearly two years -after Gilbert Burns had become the sole lessee of Mossgiel, Hamilton -apparently asked Burns to become his brother’s surety. The poet, who -was lending Gilbert nearly half the proceeds of the Edinburgh _Poems_, -declined to commit himself any further: - - ‘The language of refusal is to me the most difficult language on - earth, and you are the man of the world, excepting One of R^t - Hon^{ble} designation [i. e., Lord Glencairn], to whom it gives me the - greatest pain to hold such language.... I never wrote a letter which - gave me so much pain in my life, as I know the unhappy consequences: I - shall incur the displeasure of a Gentleman for whom I have the highest - respect, and to whom I am deeply oblidged.’ - -The foreboding was justified. After that reluctant refusal, Burns’s -relations with his former landlord never regained their old cordiality. - -In his contacts with Aiken, Ballantine, Hamilton, and certain of the -New Light clergy Burns had, by the spring of 1786, taken a further -step in the realization of his own capacities. He found himself quite -at ease, at least in male company, among members of the professional -class to whom as a lad he had looked up with awe. He was discovering, -moreover, that he was not their inferior in native ability. Though he -did not know it then, he had in fact reached as high a level as he was -ever to maintain in Scottish society. These lesser gentry not only -received him, but treated him as an equal. The higher gentry--people -of estates and pedigrees--the higher professional classes, and the -nobility, might receive him for a time, but always with a latent -condescension. Sooner or later, even with Mrs. Dunlop, even with -Robert Riddell, some incident would reveal that their feeling toward -him was after all _de haut en bas_. The friends whom he kept among men -of social and professional standing, from Aiken and Ballantine at the -beginning of his career to Alexander Findlater and John Syme at its -close, were gentlemen, were men of education, but they were not, in -Burns’s favourite capitalized phrase, Great People. - -But in the summer and autumn of 1786 it seemed there might be no limit -to Burns’s social advancement. As he went about the country during -August and September, collecting the subscriptions for his poems, the -parish outcast of a few months earlier found himself everywhere courted -and applauded. New acquaintances and old united to draw him out, and -the bolder his remarks the better they liked them. But he was still -capable of awe. In October came an invitation to dine on the 23rd at -Catrine House, country home of Dugald Stewart, Professor of Moral -Philosophy in Edinburgh University. The company included Basil William, -Lord Daer, the flighty and consumptive but liberal-minded son and heir -of the Earl of Selkirk. In an amusing set of verses Burns described -how, at the prospect of meeting a peer for the first time, his knees -shook as he sidled into the Professor’s drawing-room, and he reverted -to his old trick of watching from a corner until he had taken the -measure of the company. The incident is worth mentioning because it was -probably the last time Burns was ever unsure of himself in society. -In later months and years he was often irritated and uncomfortable -when members of the upper classes emphasized their elevation, but -such feelings were the reverse of awe. Two months after the dinner at -Catrine he was meeting professors and peers by the dozen instead of -the brace, and was maintaining not merely self-possession but critical -appraisal. - -Burns’s standards of social intercourse, as of so many other things, -were firmly established before the surviving records become full -enough for detailed study. They were as honest and straight-forward -as the rest of his dealings. Except for the brief embarrassment of a -first meeting, rank as such meant nothing to him. What he demanded, -and all he demanded, of any man was, in his own phrase, that he have -something to him. That something must be native; a matter of mind and -personality, not of social place. A Souter Johnie was better company -than a Hugh Blair, because the cobbler’s wit and wisdom were the -product of native shrewdness dealing with first-hand experience; the -professor’s attainments were ‘meerly an astonishing proof what industry -and application can do’. To his cultured friends, Burns seemed to have -a perverse taste for low company, whereas his real quest was genuine -company. His own unbridled wit and tempestuous emotions naturally made -him gravitate towards other similarly endowed people, who too often -were not pillars of society, but this was not his reason for choosing -them. When a pillar of society bore himself ‘to all the Actors, high -and low, in the drama of Life, simply as they merited in playing their -parts’, and excelled in telling a story--in other words, when the -pillar was Dugald Stewart--Burns enjoyed his company as much as John -Rankine’s or Willie Nicol’s. Nor was wit or waggishness necessarily -demanded. Grave wisdom Burns could relish as well as gay, though not -in every mood; what he could never endure was dullness, pomposity, or -conceit. - -As the autumn of 1786 wore on, new friends and old agreed that the -success of the Kilmarnock _Poems_ should make Burns abandon his flight -to Jamaica. He ought to publish a second edition in Edinburgh and then -settle down, either on a farm of his own, or--as Aiken suggested--in -the Excise service. The poet would find plenty of friends to help -him win a hearing, and publishing in the capital would give him a -national instead of a local audience. Burns must have made up his mind -immediately after his dinner with Dugald Stewart. Among his new friends -was Alexander Dalziel, steward of the Renfrewshire estates of the Earl -of Glencairn. On November 1 Dalziel wrote to congratulate Burns on -abandoning the West Indian venture and to tell him that he had showed -the _Poems_ to the Earl himself. The Earl bought a copy, which he -had richly bound, and expressed warm interest in the poems and their -author. - -Thus began Burns’s most successful acquaintance with a peer--the only -association of the sort which did not sooner or later end in apathy -on one side and humiliation on the other. Though the circumstances of -Burns’s earliest introduction to Edinburgh society are obscure, the -obscurity is lightened if we take at face value the poet’s repeated -statements that he owed everything to Glencairn--that the Earl, as he -put it, took him by the hand and led him up to fame. Burns afterwards -said that he went to the city without letters of introduction, but -that can have been true only in the narrowest sense. Dalziel certainly -apprised Glencairn of Burns’s plans, as Dr. Mackenzie apprised Sir John -Whitefoord and Andrew Erskine, and as the Rev. George Lawrie of Loudoun -apprised the blind poet, Thomas Blacklock. Dugald Stewart also must -have known of the decision. Within a week of his arrival, Burns was the -lion of the Edinburgh season. Many new friends must have contributed to -such immediate success, but the poet’s emphasis on Glencairn’s kindness -marks the Earl as the man who secured the patronage of the fashionable -Caledonian Hunt, and probably also as his sponsor in Masonic society. - -All this the Earl succeeded in doing without offending the touchy poet -by condescension, though Burns’s pride sometimes suffered because of -Glencairn’s deference to people of superior rank. Once, indeed, Burns -was ‘within half a point’ of throwing down his ‘gage of contemptuous -defiance’ because the Earl was giving too much attention to a wealthy -dunderpate, but even then he was quickly reassured as to Glencairn’s -sincere good wishes. Touchiness aside, Burns’s position in Edinburgh -recalls Benjamin Franklin’s at Versailles a decade before. In each -place the fashionable world thought it had discovered a child of -nature; in each place the newcomer had really a shrewder mind and a -quicker penetration of character and motive than most of the _élite_ -who patronized him. The contrast between Burns’s attitude toward -Glencairn and toward his fellow peer, the Earl of Buchan, shows how -thoroughly the poet had learned to take men’s measure regardless of -rank. Buchan also had professed great interest in Burns and was lavish -with advice, but Burns recognized the man as an egotistical windbag -and received his advice with an elaborate irony of compliment which -would have betrayed itself to anyone less conceited than the busybody -who once, when Sir Walter Scott lay ill, volunteered to arrange his -funeral, and who, when he himself had written some amazingly bad -verses, accepted as a tribute John Taylor’s publication of them in a -part of _The Scots Magazine_ ‘distinct from the mass of vulgar poetry’. - -Nevertheless, Burns’s deference to Glencairn had unfortunate results. -In securing William Creech, his brother’s former tutor, as Burns’s -publisher, Glencairn thought he was doing the best possible good turn. -Yet the outcome was months of vexation and delay for the poet, and the -loss of all profits from later editions of his poems. Moreover, the -poet had soberly decided that his best hope for a livelihood lay in -securing an Excise post which would support him while he banked his -profits as a reserve fund for his children. But Glencairn, like Mrs. -Dunlop and other gentry whose knowledge of the lives of tenant farmers -was limited to the quarterly receipt of their rents, was all for the -poet’s investing his capital in a farm of his own. Disapproving of -the Excise scheme, Glencairn would do nothing to forward it, though -a word from him in the right place--that is, in the ears of Henry -Dundas--would have procured Burns the appointment he sought. As it -was, all hints fell dead, while meantime Patrick Miller dangled the -bait of Ellisland. When at last Burns interested a man willing to -help the Excise plan, the mischief was already done; he was committed -to the undertaking which swallowed all his little capital. The best -intentions of his would-be patrons kept turning to evil for Burns; -even Glencairn’s gift of a diamond-pointed pencil made trouble by -supplying the poet with the means of inscribing blazing indiscretions -on window-panes. - -Burns observed the rest of the Edinburgh gentry and literati as closely -as he did Glencairn and Buchan. He was measuring himself and his -native ability against them, and was not inclined to award himself -second place. But he was not comfortable with most of them. Even if -they did not offend him by overt condescension he was fully aware that -they received him only because he was the fad of the moment. When the -novelty staled he could not hope to continue many friendships in -exalted quarters. The tide of popularity had swept him higher than he -could expect to remain; its ebb might leave him stranded far lower than -he deserved. It was not long, indeed, before his hosts began to find -things to criticize. Burns not only said what he thought, he said it -with an emphasis they found unbecoming in a man of peasant birth. The -great Doctor Johnson could be as gruff as he pleased with his Scottish -hosts because he was Johnson; Lord Braxfield could roar and Lord Kames -rave, both bawdy, in a gentleman’s home because they were Lords of -Session; for Burns to express emphatic opinions argued a lack of the -humility which beseemed a ploughman entertained by his betters. - -The fact was that Burns lacked both the finesse which would have -enabled him neatly and inoffensively to deal with snubs, and the -insensitive egotism which could have ignored them. No one could snub -the Ettrick Shepherd, because his magnificent self-esteem made it -impossible for him to see any remark in anything but a complimentary -light. One did not safely snub Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, because -that wasp could sting. Burns’s pride, unfortunately, not only made -him sensitive; it made him aggressive and heavy-handed. When he -flaunted the blue-and-buff of the Whigs he was going out of his way -to assert his independence among people who were mostly Tories; when -he told a lady, who had not waited an introduction before inviting -him to her party, that he would come if she would also invite the -learned pig from the Grassmarket, he was making a show of himself in -one way in the very act of resenting being made a show in another. -The consciousness that he was acting a part--whether behaving like a -country bumpkin in Smellie’s printing-house, or posing as the Bard of -Nature in drawing-rooms--no doubt partly explains some of his more -violent outbursts. Thus when he demolished a clergyman, whose niggling -criticisms of Gray had goaded him beyond endurance, with the Johnsonian -thunderbolt, ‘Sir, I now perceive a man may be an excellent judge of -poetry by square and rule, and after all be a damned blockhead!’ the -victim was probably drawing all the electric tension which had been -accumulating in the poet’s nerves through a long series of irritations -and repressions. But such things did him no good in Edinburgh society. - -It was not that his manners were worse than gentlemen’s. In some -respects they were probably better. ‘Swearing,’ Henry Cockburn dryly -records, ‘was thought the right, and the mark, of a gentleman. And, -tried by this test, nobody, who had not seen them, could now be made -to believe how many gentlemen there were.’ Boswell’s long-suffering -wife, Margaret Montgomerie, took her husband to task for his loud and -abusive manner of asserting himself in argument, and Boswell admitted -to his journal that she was right. Benjamin Franklin remarked that -Edinburgh was the only place he knew where violent disputatiousness was -not confined to lawyers and university men. But when a mere peasant -exhibited, in however mild a form, the traits of the gentry, he was -forgetting his place, and should be put back in it. - -Moreover, Burns quickly realized that these gentry scorned the national -tradition which was his life-blood. If they did not all, like Dr. John -Moore, urge him henceforth to write in standard English, they at least -made it plain that a Scots poet could not aspire to literary equality -with Dr. Beattie and Dr. Blair. Robert Fergusson was a regrettable -scamp whom Edinburgh preferred to forget; Burns erected, at his own -expense, a monument to Fergusson, and insisted, in speech and writing, -on praising the dead poet and heaping scorn on the gentry who had let -him starve. The place where Burns, after the first few weeks, really -enjoyed himself in Edinburgh and where he made most of his intimate -and lasting friendships, was among the Crochallan Fencibles. This -was one of the numerous clubs in which lawyers and merchants carried -on the old convivial traditions of their city. Edinburgh clubs were -ancient institutions which arrayed bibulous functions in ceremonials -ranging from the harmless High Jinks described by Scott in _Guy -Mannering_ to almost psychopathic debauchery in such an organization -as the Wig Club. They were, in fact, along with the Freemasons, the -ancestors both of the American fraternal orders and of the Rotary and -Kiwanis Clubs. In the more elaborately organized groups each officer, -and sometimes every member, had a special title. Thus each member in -Allan Ramsay’s Easy Club took the name of an old Scottish writer; in -the Cape Club, to which Robert Fergusson belonged, each member was a -Knight Companion of the Cape, with tides like Sir Cape, Sir Brimstone, -Sir Precenter (Fergusson himself), Sir Nun and Abbess, and Sir Pope. -The Fencibles went in for military designations. William Smellie, the -gruff, slovenly, and erudite printer who was handling the Edinburgh -edition of the _Poems_, as Adjutant of the corps introduced the poet. -Burns’s publisher, Creech, proved a social disappointment as well as -a financial disaster; his printer was a man after his own heart, an -‘old Veteran in Genius, Wit and Bawdry’. Smellie, like Burns, concealed -an inward diffidence and sensitivity beneath an aggressive manner; -like Burns, too, he was self-educated. The poet was not far wrong in -describing him as ‘a man positively of the first abilities and greatest -strength of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest wits -that I have met with.’ He had displayed his intellectual power in his -_Philosophy of Natural History_, long regarded as a standard work, and -in writing large sections of the original _Encyclopædia Britannica_; -his wit he reserved for conversation, where, like Burns’s, it allowed -no considerations of reverence or prudery to stand in its way. Despite -his rough exterior, he was able to captivate an intelligent woman -of the world like Maria Riddell, as well as the ebullient poet. But -the records of this friendship were too much for Smellie’s squeamish -executors; his biographer piously relates that ‘many letters of Burns -to Mr. Smellie which remained, being totally unfit for publication, -and several of them containing severe reflections on many respectable -people still in life, have been burnt.’ - -The records of another friendship which had its start among the -Edinburgh bookmen fared better. Peter Hill, five years the poet’s -senior, was in 1787 a clerk in Creech’s shop, but was soon to set up -in business for himself and prove a kindly and indulgent master to -an apprentice named Archibald Constable. Hill’s was one of the few -friendships Burns made in Edinburgh which suffered no abatement with -time. From the summer of 1787, when Hill was handling some of the -innumerable details of business relating to the Edinburgh _Poems_, -until the beginning of 1796, when Burns sent his ‘annual’ gift of a -kippered salmon from the Nith, their association was unclouded. Hill -supplied the poet with books, sent presents to his family, and took -care of miscellaneous business errands in the city. Burns secured -for Hill the book-orders, first of the Monkland Friendly Society and -later of the Dumfries Public Library, and interspersed his business -communications with hearty blasts of execration, broad humour, and -messages to all their common friends. Though the phraseology of the -letters often seems stilted, behind its stiffness glows a genuine -affection and esteem. - -But the backbone of the Fencibles was the lawyers. Their Colonel, -William Dunbar, was a jolly little bachelor some years older than the -poet; their Major and Muster-Master General was Charles Hay, friend of -Boswell in the days when the latter was striving for distinction at the -Scottish bar, whose port-inflamed countenance blinks above his judicial -robes as Lord Newton in Raeburn’s superb portrait in the Scottish -National Gallery. More notable for ‘law, paunch, whist, claret, and -worth’ than for literary interests, Hay’s one poetic suggestion to -Burns had humiliating results. He was among those who urged the poet to -compose the unfortunate elegy ‘On the Death of Lord President Dundas’, -the complete ignoring of which by Dundas’s son inflicted on Burns’s -pride a wound which never healed. - -Among the lawyer Fencibles the most congenial to Burns was Alexander -Cunningham, a distant and impoverished relative of Lord Glencairn. -Though Burns described him to his face as dissipated but not -debauched--a subtle distinction of which the exact import is probably -forever lost--Cunningham was diffident and retiring. Perhaps for this -reason, perhaps also because of his kinship to Glencairn, Burns never -sent him on such ticklish errands as he entrusted to Bob Ainslie, but -their literary and intellectual fellowship was sincere. Unlike Hay and -Ainslie, Cunningham had real fondness for the higher types of poetry, -though to offset this he had the anglicized Scotsman’s inability to -see anything but the ludicrous and the low in folk literature. Burns -felt that in offering ‘My Love is like a red red rose’ to Cunningham -he had to apologize for its simplicity; Popean imitations would have -been more in his line. The young lawyer, in short, belonged to the -generation which was trying to live down the national characteristics -that meant most to Burns. In Edinburgh the legal profession was the -last stronghold of the rich old gusto of Scottish life, the last group -of men unashamed of being ‘characters’. But even there such traits -belonged mainly to the generation passing or past which included -men like Braxfield, Monboddo, and Kames, or to the already mature -generation of Charles Hay and Henry Erskine. Cunningham belonged more -nearly to the generation of Henry Cockburn, without Cockburn’s relish -for the memories of traits which he did not share. - -Within the limits imposed by his diffidence and his tastes, Cunningham -had no reason to complain of lack of sympathy or confidence from Burns. -When his first sweetheart jilted him with humiliating publicity, -Cunningham told his sorrow to Burns, who had previously supplied him -with a poor song in furtherance of his suit, and who now condoled in -terms which bore hard on the young lady. The poet’s letters ranged -from gay impromptu verses to the confession that as a result of the -fiasco of the elegy, ‘I never see the name, Dundas, in the column of a -newspaper, but my heart seems straitened for room in my bosom; & if I -am obliged to read aloud a paragraph relating to one of them, I feel -my forehead flush, & my nether lip quivers.’ On his part, Cunningham -obtained for Burns the last national honour which Edinburgh conferred -in his lifetime--election to membership in the socially exclusive Royal -Company of Archers. And at the end Cunningham received one of the -poet’s desperate appeals for help--not for money, but for intercession -with the Commissioners of Excise not to put him on half-pay during -his illness. Cunningham, moreover, shared with John Syme the credit -for setting on foot the subscription for Jean and the children after -Burns’s death, though his diffidence made him a poor collector of -funds. Through diffidence, also, he permitted George Thomson to prepare -for the newspapers the obituary he should have written himself, and by -this neglect did injury to his friend’s memory. - -But the names of three other friends are associated with much more -damage to Burns’s reputation during his life and after his death. Only -one of the three was a Fencible--Robert Cleghorn, a jolly gentleman -farmer from Corstorphine. Cleghorn had what Cunningham lacked, a -strong relish for vernacular literature, publishable or unpublishable. -Thus he became the recipient of many choice bits of verse, sometimes -traditional and sometimes original, for his own and his friends’ -edification. The correspondence harmed Burns’s reputation not through -its publication but through its long suppression. That remarkable -moralist, Lord Byron, read the Cleghorn letters in manuscript and -set down in his journal a highly-coloured summary of them as ‘full -of oaths and obscene songs’ which stimulated the imaginations of -several generations of readers. Now that the surviving letters can -be read in full, they produce no such revulsion as do some of the -things Burns wrote about Jean Armour and Maria Riddell. For readers -who do not relish broad humour they may be distasteful, but beneath -their coarseness is the record of a genuine friendship with an honest, -hearty, and generous man. One suspects that had Cunningham, for -instance, visited Burns at Ellisland or Dumfries, he would have felt -the same disillusionment at sight of the poet’s narrow and primitive -domestic life which the pettier Robert Ainslie recorded. Cleghorn made -such a visit in 1795, when Burns’s health and spirits were already -declining, and left behind him a warm glow of renewed and strengthened -friendship. - -It is regrettable that Cleghorn’s name should be, for most readers of -Burns, associated with the poet’s collection of ‘cloaciniad’ verse. In -fact, Cleghorn received no more of such work than did a dozen other -friends, but John Allen, his stepson and heir, had ideas about the -treatment of a great poet’s manuscripts which differed from those of -William Smellie’s executors. Allen did not feel free, by mutilating -some of his most characteristic letters, to ‘protect the memory’ of -a poet who had never tried to disguise any side of his own nature. -And Cleghorn’s tastes were as catholic as David Herd’s, or as Burns’s -own. He measured the merit of a song by its singing quality, and not -by its suitability for use in a young ladies’ seminary. Burns sent -him the charming ‘O wat ye wha that lo’es me’ with the certainty -that it would please him as much as the broadest ribaldry. The male -who in male company does not occasionally relish crude humour is a -scarce creature in any age or nation; was perhaps unusually scarce in -eighteenth-century Scotland. The songs which went to Cleghorn went also -to Graham of Fintry and Provost Maxwell, to Collector Mitchell and John -M’Murdo and John Syme--in other words, to some of the best and most -loyal characters in Burns’s circle. Boswell’s journals are crammed with -proof that similar tastes prevailed in still higher ranks of society. - -To avoid misunderstanding both Burns and his friends, a brief -digression is necessary regarding the book entitled _The Merry Muses of -Caledonia_. Burns was well aware that his own work, like the folk-songs -he collected, was divided into the publishable and the unpublishable. -But he did not draw the line where his later editors did. To him, ‘The -Jolly Beggars’, ‘A Poet’s Welcome’, and ‘Holy Willie’ were no fitter -for general circulation than were ‘When Princes and Prelates’ and -‘The Court of Equity’. They were _jeux d’esprit_ intended for private -circulation among a few intimates. His riotous imagination respected -no boundaries when it began to play; what distinguishes most of his -bawdry from the common sort is its wit. And this wit as frequently -saw how an improper folk-song could be made more brilliantly improper -as it saw how a halting one could be made lyric. Much of his folk -collection, together with ‘a very few’ of his own composition, was -written into a manuscript volume which he sometimes lent about, with -strict injunctions as to secrecy. According to tradition, that volume -fell after his death into unscrupulous hands and formed the basis of -the earliest of the various collections called _The Merry Muses_. The -tradition is almost certainly wrong. The ultimate source may have been -Burns, but not the immediate one. In all the editions the authentic -Burns verses are too garbled to have been printed from his own copies. -They bear every sign of oral transmission or hasty transcription at -several removes from the original. The real manuscript was probably -destroyed after Burns’s death; certainly it was never printed. It would -have been better for his reputation if it had, for he now stands father -or godfather to a garbled mass of Scottish, English, and Irish filth, -little of which he wrote, and some of which he never even saw. - -Neither Robert Ainslie nor William Nicol needed the chance association -of their names with fescennine verse to bring discredit on Burns. Their -own conduct sufficed. Ainslie, like Cunningham, was a young lawyer, -but the two moved in different orbits, and were never brought together -even by their friendship for Burns. They appealed to different facets -of the poet’s nature, Ainslie’s relation to him being that of Smith -and Richmond in the days of the Fornicators’ Court. The son of a good -family in the Border village of Dunse, Ainslie was celebrating his -recent emancipation from parental government by sowing a plentiful crop -of wild oats. Full of the high spirits of twenty-one, he furnished the -same ready chorus of laughter the Mauchline cronies had provided, and -was rapidly qualifying himself to discuss with Burns the pleasing topic -of comparative bastardy. The most enjoyable part of the poet’s Border -tour in May, 1787, was his visit to Dunse; after Ainslie left him he -complained that he never had a mouthful of really hearty laughter on -the trip. - -Even the mutilated letters which survive show that Burns freely -confided his past and present peccadillos to Ainslie; the sequel proves -the confidence to have been ill bestowed. At the end of the Border -tour, for instance, Burns found awaiting him in Dumfries post-office -a letter from Meg Cameron, an Edinburgh servant girl who was to -bear a child which she claimed was his. Ainslie was commissioned to -‘send for the wench and give her ten or twelve shillings’ against -the poet’s return to the city. In reply, Ainslie broke the news that -he had himself just become the father of an illegitimate son, and -received from his friend a roaring welcome to ‘the venerable Society -of Fathers’. Again in the following year Burns favored Ainslie with a -highly-coloured account of his final reconciliation with Jean Armour, -and early in 1789 instructed his young friend to locate Jenny Clow so -that Burns, on his arrival in Edinburgh, could settle the suit Jenny -had brought against him. More creditable matters also occupied the -correspondence. Some of Burns’s earliest doubts about Ellisland, some -of his deepest gloom about his own and his family’s future, were told -to Ainslie. But the friendship died before Burns did, and through -Ainslie’s fault. - -On Friday, October 15, 1790, Ainslie came to Ellisland for the -week-end. On Monday he reported the visit to Agnes M’Lehose, with whom -he was by this time on confidential, and even flirtatious, terms. The -warmth of Burns’s welcome was gratifying, but the house, he noted, -was ‘ill contrived--and pretty Dirty, and _Hugry Mugry_’, and its -other inmates pleased him little. Jean was ‘Vulgar & Common-place in a -considerable degree--and pretty round & fat’, but ‘a kind Body in her -Own way, and the husband Tolerably Attentive to her’. Also present were -Burns’s sister and sister-in-law--‘common looking girls’--and ‘3 Male -and female cousins’ who had been helping with the harvest. - -Burns rejoiced that his friend had arrived ‘upon his _Kirn_ night, when -he Expected some of his friends to help make merry’, but sight of the -guests deepened Ainslie’s depression, for they were ‘a Vulgar looking -Tavern keeper from Dumfries; and his Wife more Vulgar--Mr. Miller of -Dalswinton’s Gardener and his Wife--and said Wife’s sister--and a -little fellow from Dumfries, who had been a Clerk’. Burns and the rest -had a good time, ‘Dancing, and Kissing the Lasses at the End of every -dance’, while Ainslie shuddered to the depths of his paltry little -soul. Burns the peasant was enjoying himself in the world of his birth, -and the young snob from Edinburgh couldn’t understand him at all: - - ‘... Our Friend himself is as ingenious as ever, and Seems very happy - with the Situation I have described--His Mind however now appears to - me to be a great Mixture of the poet and the Excise Man--One day he - sits down and Writes a Beautiful poem--and the Next he Seizes a cargo - of Tobacco from some unfortunate Smuggler--or Roups out some poor - Wretch for Selling liquors without a License. From his conversation he - Seems to be frequently among the Great--but No Attention is paid by - people of any rank to his wife....’ - -After such a letter--withheld from complete publication until 1938--it -is plain enough why the friendship went into a swift decline. For -another year or two Burns continued to write, gaily or confidentially, -but got small response. Ainslie’s last letter, early in 1794, ‘was so -dry, so distant, so like a card to one of his clients’, that the poet -‘could scarce bear to read it’, and never answered it. The lawyer was -already on his way, via the fashionable _Werther_ melancholy, back to -the orthodox piety which led him, early in the nineteenth century, to -compose a couple of devotional pamphlets. But neither piety nor loyalty -sufficed to make him protect the memory of the friend whose name has -kept his alive. Preserving the reckless letters Burns had written him, -he allowed them to pass into circulation, once at least accompanied -by a formal docket certifying that Burns was the author of a letter -signed with a humorous pen-name. The mutilations which so many of the -manuscripts have suffered were the work of later owners. - -Ainslie’s chief injury to Burns’s fame was inflicted after the poet’s -death; William Nicol, Latin master in Edinburgh High School, harmed -him in life. A coarse, egotistical, drunken man of violent temper, -Nicol was also one of the foremost Latin scholars of his day. In his -bawdy violence of language Burns saw wit; his emphatic dislike of his -superiors Burns interpreted as proof of an independent spirit. No great -harm might have come of the friendship had it been confined to drinking -bouts in Edinburgh and to correspondence thereafter. Unfortunately -Burns took Nicol as his travelling companion on the tour of the -Highlands in September, 1787. This tour was Burns’s chance to meet -influential folk in their homes and to show himself at his best. Thanks -to Nicol he came near to showing himself at his worst. Among the people -from whom he had invitations were the Duke and Duchess of Athole. -Their reception of him at Blair Athole was all the touchy poet could -desire. The Duke and Duchess were cordiality itself; among the guests -was Robert Graham of Fintry, Commissioner of Excise, whose friendship -and influence could be of the utmost importance to Burns; a still -more influential person, Henry Dundas, dispenser of patronage for all -Scotland, was expected next day on one of his periodical inspections -of his political fences. Everything seemed to be going well for Burns -when Nicol, the ‘most unprincipled savage’, intervened. The boorish -schoolmaster, finding himself neglected in favour of his companion, -decided to move on at once, and insisted on Burns’s going with him. -The poet’s pride made him guilty of outrageous bad manners. In reply -to Nicol’s insistence, Burns should have bidden him go to the devil -his own gait. But that might have been interpreted as subservience to -the Great. Through what can only be described as inverted snobbery, -Burns allowed Nicol to drag him away. The scene was repeated at Castle -Gordon, where the merry Duchess, who had declared in Edinburgh that -Burns swept her off her feet, pleaded in vain against Nicol’s urgings. -Though he afterwards wrote complimentary and apologetic letters, and -cursed the ‘obstinate son of Latin Prose’, Burns could not efface the -impression he had made. He never saw the Atholes or the Gordons again. - -Throughout the trip Nicol’s conduct was the same; he even snatched -Burns away before breakfast from the home of his cousin, James Burness -of Montrose. The Highland tour, though he did not then realize it, was -Burns’s last opportunity to enlist the active friendship of people -whose influence might have changed his life. His failure was largely -Nicol’s fault. Reports of his abrupt and ungracious conduct undoubtedly -came back to Edinburgh and contributed to the comparative neglect he -suffered during his second winter in the city. Edinburgh was too small -a place for misconduct to hide in; every lawyer in the old Parliament -House would have heard that a servant girl had brought suit against the -Ayrshire Bard; the stories from the Highlands, losing nothing in the -telling, would add to the swelling tide of hostile gossip. The talk, -indeed, reached so far, and was believed so implicitly, that not even -death could alter Edinburgh opinion. Cunningham’s efforts to interest -prominent citizens in the subscription for Burns’s widow and children -met repeated snubs and refusals; to this day, despite the monument -on the Calton Hill, the city pays only a half-hearted tribute to his -memory. - -Of course all blame for the hostile talk cannot be shifted to Nicol, -or even to Meg Cameron and Jenny Clow. Burns was indiscreet enough to -start plenty of tales without help. But his too long stay unfortunately -predisposed many people to believe the worst not only of his conduct -in the city but afterwards. Henry Mackenzie and Dugald Stewart, for -instance, both accepted at face value the second-hand reports of -Burns’s alleged misdoings in Dumfries, and wrote him off their books. -For years anecdotes showing Burns in an absurd or discreditable light -circulated in Edinburgh. Some may have been true; others were malicious -distortions which point the direction taken by city opinion. Thus -Lockhart told how Hugh Blair had suggested, when a party of gentlemen -were discussing possible changes in the Kilmarnock _Poems_, that -‘tidings of salvation’ might advantageously be emended to ‘tidings of -damnation’. Thereupon the poet, according to Lockhart, embarrassed -the professor by asking permission to acknowledge his improvement in -a footnote. The basis of the story is truth; its details are not. -Blair did suggest the change; Burns did, in conversation with other -people, acknowledge his help. But Blair’s suggestion came in writing, -as a carefully veiled hint amid other criticisms of the poems. The -episode as Lockhart told it is city gossip intended to display Blair -as the urbane professor and patron and Burns as a clumsy rustic. Of -no importance in itself, the story is symptomatic of the attitude of -cultured Edinburgh after the first enthusiasm over Burns had waned. - -But no realization of the trouble Nicol was helping to make, no -recognition of the schoolmaster’s real character, affected Burns. He -continued, after he left the city, to correspond with Nicol; when the -obstinate son of Latin Prose got into the row which finally led to his -resignation from the High School, Burns championed him against his -amiable principal, Dr. Alexander Adam. By christening one of his sons -William Nicol, Burns proclaimed his friendship to the world at large, -and during the years at Ellisland performed such services as getting -appraisals of a farm Nicol was buying, and maintaining a broken-down -mare which a horse-coper had passed off on the schoolmaster. The -friendship lasted until February, 1793, when Burns was suffering from -the rage and humiliation which followed the official inquiry into his -revolutionary sympathies. Some report of the matter having reached -Nicol, he undertook to rebuke Burns in a would-be facetious vein. -The poet was in no mood for rebuke or good advice, facetious or not, -and with his heavily satirical reply to Nicol their correspondence -ended--too late. - -In any case Edinburgh friendships, good or bad, however much he might -try to maintain them by correspondence, could not supply companionship -when Burns moved to Ellisland. Though on his first visit to Dumfries -he had professed himself enchanted with the company he met, he was -lonely enough when he actually settled there. He made acquaintances, no -doubt ‘men of talent and humour’, among the tradesfolk and professional -men of the town, but people like Dr. James Mundell, Walter Auld the -saddler, Henry Clint of the King’s Arms, William Hyslop of the Globe -Inn, and Thomas Boyd, the contractor who built Ellisland, are names and -little more. Apart from his landlord, Patrick Miller, with whom his -relations were soon strained, the most congenial friend he had during -the three years on the farm was Robert Riddell of Glenriddell, whose -estate of Friars Carse marched with Ellisland. - -Riddell was a country gentleman turned amateur antiquarian. He had -embellished his grounds with a ‘Druid Circle’ and a ‘Hermitage’; he -dabbled in numismatics and church architecture. These would scarcely -have interested Burns--though he remained in the hermitage long enough -to inscribe some verses on the window with Glencairn’s diamond-pointed -pencil--but Riddell was also a musician in a small way. Besides -composing a few commonplace airs of his own he professed great -interest in the traditional music of his country. Here Burns shared -his enthusiasm and far excelled his knowledge. The laird, perhaps at -Burns’s suggestion, subscribed for Johnson’s _Museum_ and had his set -bound with blank interleaves for notes on the songs, their authors, -and their history. The number of his annotations gives the measure -of his knowledge. Out of four hundred songs, one hundred and seventy -have notes. Of these, one hundred and fifty-two were written by Burns, -who must have spent many evenings at the task in his friend’s library; -eighteen were by Riddell himself or an amanuensis. Sir Walter Scott -summed up the laird’s prose writings as ‘truly the most extravagant -compositions that ever a poor Man abandoned by providence to the -imaginations of his own heart had the misfortune to devise.’ - -The company which sometimes came to Carse, including as it did men like -Joseph Farington the painter--who noted that ‘Mr. Burns the Scottish -Poet’ was ‘a middle-sized man, ... black complexioned, and his general -appearance that of a tradesman or mechanick’, had ‘a strong expressive -manner of delivering himself in conversation’, and knew no Latin--and -Francis Grose, the antiquary whose inspiring enthusiasm was the real -source of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’, was more important than Riddell himself. -The laird’s real tastes and aptitudes were convivial. A man of powerful -physique and a rather overwhelming robustiousness of manner--William -Smellie spoke of ‘his immense fist and stentorian voice’--he succeeded, -like so many gentlemen of his day, in wrecking his health at an early -age. The notorious ‘Whistle’ contest, in which Riddell and his kinsmen -Sir Robert Laurie and Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch undertook -to drink each other under the table for the possession of a family -heirloom, was probably more typical of the laird’s true aptitudes -than the annotations were. Even at that, though, he was outdone by -Craigdarroch, who won the whistle by drinking ‘upds. of 5 Bottles of -Claret’. Burns, like most of the friends of the contestants, found the -incident vastly amusing; Burns’s biographers have argued the question -of his real presence at Friars Carse with an almost theological -fervour; nevertheless its only interest or value for posterity lies -in the light it sheds on Robert Riddell’s character. According to -biographical tradition, Robert Riddell was the staid member of the -family and his brother Walter the wild one; actually such distinction -between them seems as baseless as the kindred legend that Gilbert Burns -was a better farmer than his brother. But whether Glenriddell led or -followed in the events which for a time estranged the poet from the -whole Riddell family, the circumstances of the breach resemble with -painful clarity many other episodes in Burns’s contacts with the gentry. - -The full story of the ‘Rape of the Sabines’ is Maria Riddell’s more -than her brother-in-law’s, but Robert Riddell had a share in the -trouble. During 1792 and 1793, when Walter Riddell and his wife -Maria were occupying the estate of Goldielea or Woodley Park, family -relations were not always harmonious. At a guess, Walter wanted to -borrow from his elder brother the funds to complete payment for Woodley -Park; at a guess, the wives failed to charm each other. Whatever the -causes, by the autumn of 1792 Burns had to assure Maria that he -would listen to no stories about her from Glenriddell--and presumably -also from Glenriddell’s wife. Yet for another year or more the poet -managed to stay on good terms with both families. The year 1793 was, -poetically and flirtatiously, the highest point of Burns’s friendship -with Maria; the same year produced asseverations of friendship as -‘ardent & grateful’ on Burns’s part as Robert Riddell’s was ‘kind and -generous’. In leisure moments the poet was transcribing a collection -of his letters as a companion volume to the collection of unpublished -verse he had given the laird in 1791. On Christmas day he was still -transcribing. On January 12, 1794, his quarrel with Maria had reached -its climax. Somewhere between those two dates had occurred the -mysterious brawl in which Robert Riddell’s part is still a matter of -controversy. - -If Robert Riddell was the host, who, by compelling Burns to drink more -than he wished to, reduced the poet to a state in which he insulted -his hostess, the laird’s conduct admits of small excuse; if, as -report has it, the scene occurred at Woodley Park and Robert Riddell -subsequently took up the quarrel, he is even less excusable. Whichever -version one accepts, Riddell was displaying innate snobbishness towards -a man he considered, after all, a social inferior. If he was the -host, realization of his own share in the matter should have made him -charitable; if his brother was the host, Glenriddell was indulging in -violent and uncalled-for partisanship. He held, it would seem, the same -theory of a gentleman’s privileges as was enunciated a few years later -by Sir John Graham Dalyell: ‘I am a gentleman, and I will be treated -as such; and if any person presumes to pervert my meaning in any way -whatever, if his rank is not equal to mine I will kick him; and if it -is equal I will shoot him.’ Burns, as a plebeian, was kicked. There is -a little satisfaction in knowing that the poet held to his resolution -not to apologize to his host. The ‘Remorseful Apology’ supposed to -have been addressed to a Riddell was really sent, early in 1796, to a -Mr. S. Mackenzie. Four months after the quarrel Glenriddell was dead, -still unreconciled to the poet who had done more for him than he could -ever have done for the poet. A loud blustering squire, a hollow and -unsubstantial mind; that was Robert Riddell. - -For the last five years of his life Burns’s social world centred in -Dumfries. About it cluster dark stories and darker hints, in the -effort to refute which the poet’s defenders have sometimes been led -to dangerous extremities of special pleading. The truth is that Burns -in Dumfries was neither better nor worse than Burns in Tarbolton and -Mauchline. Such a report as James Gray’s of finding Burns reading -poetry with his children and hearing the older boys recite their -lessons does not refute the tales of boisterous revelry in taverns; -both are true. The sole difference is that Burns in Tarbolton was an -unimportant young man amid a group of other youths; in Edinburgh he was -partly lost in the crowds; in Dumfries he was a prominent figure whose -every action was noted. He did not degenerate in Dumfries, but neither -did he become a chocolate seraph. - -Fortunately it is no longer necessary to rely on conjecture and -second-hand reports in studying Burns’s last years. The letters which -passed between two of his most intimate friends, John Syme of Dumfries -and Alexander Cunningham of Edinburgh, are now available to replace -guess-work with facts. Of all the friends of Burns’s last years, Syme -is now the one who emerges most clearly, and with most credit to -himself. A man of good education, a college friend of Dr. James Currie, -the poet’s first biographer, Syme regarded Dumfries as a place of exile -in which Burns’s society was almost the only redeeming feature. Having -lost his small paternal estate of Barncailzie near Kirkcudbright, -he had managed to recoup his fortunes by getting appointed to the -sinecure post of Collector of Stamps at Dumfries. He first met Burns -in 1788, but not until two years later did they become intimate. Syme -was a man of sentiment in the best tradition of Henry Mackenzie and -_The Sorrows of Werther_. He went into raptures over thunderstorms -and desolate scenery; he read Zimmermann’s _Treatise on Solitude_; he -thought Clarinda’s the finest love-letters ever written. Rhapsodic and -absent-minded, he was the sort who could set off on a long-planned -hunting-trip and find on arriving at his destination that he had -forgotten his dogs. Maria Riddell paid warm tribute to his good head -and excellent heart, but added that in matters of business he wanted -method: ‘He is always in a labyrinth of papers and accounts, and, -somewhat like the cuttlefish, he obscures himself altogether in a mist -of his own creating.’ - -Burns admired Syme’s education and literary taste; Syme thought the -poet ‘a noble fellow’, admired his wit and brilliant conversation, but -could not admire his wife. ‘Methinks he has exhibited his poetical -genius when he celebrated her’, he said to Cunningham after his first -sight of Jean. Before long Burns was submitting his new poems to Syme -and expressing implicit confidence in his judgement, though Syme avowed -that he scarcely dared to touch a line of them. Sometimes the two would -meet in a boisterous crowd at a tavern; again they would spend a quiet -evening over a single bottle of wine in the little croft of Ryedale -which Syme regarded as his refuge ‘from the frivolous and dissipated -society’ of Dumfries. Without Burns, said Syme, his life in the town -would be ‘a dreary blank’. Syme had set himself up as a clearing-house -for humorous and satirical verses written or collected by his friends, -and Burns quickly became the chief contributor to the hoard. Some of -the verses compelled caution in sharing them. Of the epigram on the -Loyal Natives Club, for instance, Syme told Cunningham that, though he -and Burns were ‘far from differing from them on sentiments of loyalty, -we differ on _sentiment_, abstractly considered. They scarcely know -the meaning of the word Sentiment, & their Society consists in roaring -& drinking.’ ‘Don’t,’ he added after quoting the epigram, ‘let any -Dumfries person see this, for one of the Savages, if he heard it, -might cut Robin’s pipe.’ - -Syme’s letters abundantly illustrate what he meant by ‘frivolous and -dissipated society’. When the Caledonian Hunt met at Dumfries in -November, 1794, ‘Baker, one of the knowing english Squires on the Turf, -made an elegant appearance by insulting in the grossest manner Squire -Walter Riddel of this place, who pursued him to Durham and made him -ask pardon, which is published in our papers of last week.’ On the -same occasion the Honourable Ramsay Maule of Panmure showed that for -once at least Burns was justified in the tone of a satirical epigram, -for Panmure and some drunken companions smeared a helpless underling’s -hair with mustard and stuck it full of toothpick quills, ‘by way of -hedgehogging him’. That Burns gnashed his teeth and passed by on the -other side when he encountered such members of the organization to -which he had dedicated his Edinburgh _Poems_, is no ground for wonder. -He had larded the Caledonian Hunt with flattery, and they were behaving -like cads and bullies. - -But though Burns shrank from the Caledonian Hunt he did not always -avoid similar company. There were meetings at which he and Syme drank -bumpers out with wild Irishmen--such meetings as led Thomas Telford the -engineer jovially to warn Burns that if he went on ‘in his old way, -not even a _she Devil_ will be able to meet with a Milt in him.’ There -was a drunken brawl with one Captain Dods, who took hot exception to -the poet’s toast, ‘May our success in the present war be equal to the -justice of our cause.’ That Burns escaped a duel only because he was -not the Captain’s social equal did not lessen his humiliation. Most -biographers have held that such a toast in the presence of gentlemen -holding the King’s commission was a huge breach of the proprieties, -and so it was--if Burns was not goaded into giving it. Nothing in the -record as it stands forbids belief that Dods, or some other officer -who knew that Burns was suspected of sympathy with the French, may -have called for a round of loyal toasts with the deliberate intention -of embarrassing the poet. In that case, nothing could have been neater -than Burns’s evasion, and since nothing came of the episode it is to -be presumed that Samuel Clarke succeeded in making the sobered Dods -realize what his objection to the sentiment implied. - -But there were other similar episodes which cannot be so favourably -explained, and which multiply proof that Burns had never acquired -finesse, whether in toasting, flattering, or sinning. Whatever he did -was done so forthrightly that it attracted attention. And the moment he -attracted attention his companions recollected that after all he was a -peasant received on sufferance into gentle company. The outcome might -be expulsion from the house for conduct which a gentleman born need -not even have apologized for, it might be a verbal attack like Captain -Dods’s, or it might be merely a tacit resolve to drop him forthwith. -The Edinburgh experience repeated itself in Dumfries. Burns’s -ill-repute in certain quarters during his life and after his death was -not owing to his being a sinner above the other Caledonians, but simply -to his lack of the social standing which enabled Kames and Braxfield -and Boswell to misbehave without penalty, and which would have tempered -the sting of his satirical outbursts. - -Occasional public drunken squabbles are not the only evidence that -during these last years Burns’s nerves were often exacerbated. The -loyal Syme once undertook to rebuke him for some of his wild doings -and sayings. His language was too strong--telling the story afterwards -he admitted, ‘I may have spoken daggers, but I meant none.’ The poet, -his face black with anger, fumbled with his sword-cane. Syme, half -laughing, half serious, exclaimed, ‘What! and in my own house, too!’ -The conscience-stricken Burns flung away the cane, burst into tears, -and positively grovelled in contrition on the flagstone floor. It is -not a pleasant scene, and though the vividness with which it stayed in -Syme’s memory is indication enough that it was exceptional, it cannot -be ignored. No man, drunk or sober, whose nerves were normal could have -behaved so. - -Fortunately the vividness of Syme’s memory is not the only proof that -such conduct was exceptional. Others besides Syme who were nearest to -Burns in his last years concur in their loyalty and affection. At the -end of 1790 Alexander Findlater reported to his official superior, -Supervisor Corbet, that Burns was ‘an active, faithful & zealous -officer’, gave ‘the most unremitting attention to the duties of his -office (which, by the bye is more than I at first looked for from -so eccentric a Genius)’, and might ‘be considered a credit to the -profession’. And the judgment which Findlater thus expressed at the -beginning of the poet’s Excise career he reaffirmed after his death. -Others testified to their regard in deeds as well as words. Though -Burns continued to display his life-long preference for the company -of extravagant and _outré_ sorts of people the best men in the Excise -were the ones who esteemed him most. John Lewars, for example, brother -of the Jessie of the songs, was a man of some education, and above -the level of the common riding-officer. His father had been Collector -at Dumfries, and thus a man of standing in the community. Burns -called Lewars ‘a young fellow of uncommon merit--indeed, by far the -cleverest fellow I have met with in this part of the world’, and Lewars -reciprocated the poet’s affection by service to him and his family -during his illness and after his death. And that Burns’s long absence -from duty did not bear more heavily on him was due to the kindness -of Adam Stobbie, a young expectant who throughout the spring of 1796 -performed Burns’s rounds without pay, that the poet might continue to -draw his full salary. - -Fortunately, too, Syme records bright passages as well as dark in the -last years. There were evenings at Ryedale when they consumed more -cups of tea than bottles of wine, and when ‘Robin’s confounding wit’ -played as sharply as it ever did over a punchbowl. In 1793 and 1794 -there were brief excursions with Burns into Kirkcudbright on which -the mercurial poet displayed every facet of his nature, bursting into -furious rage over a spoiled pair of boots, fulminating brilliantly -satirical epigrams against the Earl of Galloway, announcing that -he would dine nowhere where he could not ‘eat like a Turk, drink -like a fish and swear like the Devil’, and anon proving a decorous -and fascinating houseguest at St. Mary’s Isle, seat of the Earl of -Selkirk, whose son Lord Daer had given Burns his first glimpse of -the peerage. Burns still shrank from the ordeal of encountering such -exalted folk--‘I am indeed ill at ease whenever I approach your -Honorables & Right Honorables’--though now for a different reason. In -1786 the consciousness of his own rusticity had been uppermost; in -1794 he did not wish to be laid open either to a fresh snub or renewed -condescension. But his last recorded intercourse with the peerage was -as pleasant--and as dangerous--as his first. The Earl of Selkirk was -one of the few Scottish peers who were Whigs at a time when all power -belonged to the Tories; thus meeting Burns on congenial grounds he -helped to draw him into the last of his ill-advised meddlings with -politics by interesting him in the parliamentary campaign of Patrick -Heron of Heron. So to the last the peerage influenced Burns against -his own best interests. Nevertheless this visit to St. Mary’s Isle is -refutation enough of the charge that in his last years Burns had sunk -so low that gentlefolk shunned him. The man who so charmed the Earl’s -young daughter, Lady Mary Douglas, that she lent him a volume of music -and entered into correspondence about his task of fitting Scottish airs -with words, can scarcely have been the social outcast some biographers -have portrayed. In fact, he strikingly resembles the man who in 1787 -swept the Duchess of Gordon off her feet, and won the esteem of Lady -Harriet Don and the Dowager Countess of Glencairn. - -Despite their intimacy, it would be false to claim that Syme shared all -Burns’s interests. No one man could do that. The very topic on which -Burns and Lady Mary found common ground was outside Syme’s range. He -never could understand what Burns saw in the crude and half-literate -James Johnson, because he never understood the bond of fellowship -established by mutual devotion to Scottish folk-song. Nevertheless, -Syme was probably the closest to Burns of all his Dumfries friends, and -knew--as certain impassioned defenders like Anna Dorothea Benson could -not--the worst as well as the best in his later conduct. The man who -noted that ‘Robin’s temper is not cold and frugal’, and who did not -hesitate to record the sword-cane story and certain other episodes, -cannot be charged with allowing affection to obscure the full truth -about his friend. Hence Syme’s deeds and words at the time of Burns’s -death give as reliable a verdict on the poet’s last years as can now be -reached. - -As Burns’s health failed in 1796 Syme watched him with increasing -anxiety. As long as he could he hoped for recovery, but when the poet -returned from the Brow Well his ‘cadaverous aspect and shaken frame’ -told the truth which the doctors confirmed. On July 17 Syme wrote to -warn Cunningham and to urge him to press their friend’s petition to the -Commissioners of Excise that they continue his full salary. Two days -later, when Syme called at the little house in Mill Street, he saw the -hand of Death visibly fixed on Burns: - - ‘I cannot dwell on the scene. It overpowers me--yet gracious God were - it thy will to recover him! He had life enough to acknowledge me, and - Mrs. Burns said he had been calling on you and me continually. He - made a wonderful exertion when I took him by the hand. With a strong - voice he said, “I am much better today--I shall soon be well again, - for I command my spirits & my mind. But yesterday I resigned myself to - death.” Alas it will not do.’ - -Syme was already consulting with Patrick Miller, John M’Murdo, Dr. -Maxwell, and other Dumfries friends to set measures afoot for the -welfare of Jean and the children; when he wrote again on the 21st, -shaken by the ‘variety of distressful emotions’ stirred by Burns’s -death, he gave further details of their plans, and urged Cunningham to -launch a similar plan in Edinburgh and to see that a proper obituary -was prepared. Here Cunningham blundered. He entrusted the obituary to -George Thomson, and the latter’s remark that Burns’s ‘extraordinary -endowments were accompanied with frailties which rendered them useless -to himself and his family’ roused the Dumfries friends to indignation. -‘We were much hurt at this,’ said Syme, ‘& reckoned it indelicate, if -not unfeelingly superfluous on that occasion.’ - -These feelings were intensified by the appearance in the London -_Chronicle_ of a longer article, also by Thomson, which included -assertions that Burns’s ‘talents were often obscured and finally -impaired by excess,’ that ‘his conduct and his fate afford[ed] but too -melancholy proofs’ of his possessing the failings as well as the powers -of genius, and that, ‘like his predecessor Fergus[s]on, though he died -at an early age, his mind was previously exhausted.’ Thomson had never -been in Dumfries, and had never met Burns. The friends in Dumfries who -read his article did not concur. Syme’s comment was brief and pointed. -These statements were ‘d----d illiberal lies’. On that comment, by -the man who knew him best in his last years, the case for the defence -of Burns against the stories of his deterioration in Dumfries may be -allowed to rest. - - - - -IV - -WOMEN - - -Burns was twenty-six before he ever entered the home of a woman -sufficiently well-to-do to have carpets on her floors. Though the last -ten years of his life included many friendships with ladies, his basic -ideas of the other sex were the fruit of the peasant environment he -was reared in. His sentiment and chivalry were literary by-products; -underneath them was always the crude realism of the Ayrshire -countryfolk. In moments of stress it was only too apt to come to the -surface. - -The only subtlety the peasant women of Burns’s youth could claim was -that native to every daughter of Eve. Schooling was too expensive to -waste on girls. The majority, like Agnes Broun, could not write their -own names; many could not even spell out the Scriptures or the Psalms -of David in metre. Their fathers, their husbands, or the minister -could read the Bible to them, and thus they could obtain the light of -salvation at second hand. But this is not to say that they knew no -literature. In fact it was only among an illiterate population that the -songs and ballads of popular tradition were living realities. James -Hogg’s mother spoke for her whole class when she told Sir Walter Scott -that he had killed her ballads by writing them down. Learning to read -destroyed both the sense of reality in the traditional literature and -the retentiveness of memory which made its transmission possible. Had -Betty Davidson, Agnes Broun, and Jean Armour been literate women they -would not have furnished Burns with the mass of traditional literature -he owed to them. - -A girl’s real education in rural Scotland was obtained in the kitchen, -the dairy, and the fields. Almost as soon as they could walk boys and -girls alike helped with the sheep and cattle and in all the work of -seedtime and harvest. As they grew older the girls were trained more -and more for the indoor duties of which cooking was the smallest part. -Most of the clothing was made at home, from the carding and spinning -of the wool and flax to the sewing of the finished webs into garments. -Itinerant tailors made the Sunday clothes of the men; all the rest was -the work of the women of the household. Add to these activities the -manifold duties of kitchen and dairy and poultry yard and no peasant -woman could have reason to complain of lack of occupation. At harvest -time men and women alike turned out into the fields, the men to mow -with scythe and sickle, the women and boys to bind and stack the -sheaves and to glean after the reapers. - -It was from these barefooted illiterate lasses that Burns got his first -experiences in love and his whole simple theory of the relations of the -sexes. Woman as the peasant knows her, sharing his daily toil, is not -a superior being set apart for adoration. There is no mystery about -her except the endless mystery of sex. There may be companionship and -a more intimate sharing of the man’s interests than women of higher -rank attain. But the peasant woman cannot expect and does not get the -graces of deference. Burns’s attitude towards the girls of his class -differed in one respect only from that of any other possessive young -male. He was a poet, and from the very beginning poetry and sex were -inextricably mingled. When as a fifteen-year-old boy he helped Nellie -Kilpatrick to bind sheaves in the harvest field, and experienced the -primitive coquetry which sought his help in extracting nettle and -thistle stings from her fingers, his first impulses were those of any -adolescent just becoming conscious of desire. But the second impulse -was different. Unable to possess Nellie, he made a song about her. - -As we have seen, courtship among the peasantry was no private matter. -Not only did everyone know who was courting whom, but the aid of -interested friends was habitually enlisted in arranging trysts. -While still in his teens Burns displayed a command of the written -word--insufferably turgid though the few surviving specimens of his -early love-letters seem to us--which made him the chosen secretary -for his less fluent cronies. He himself fell into love and out again -with ease and frequency. But his early sweethearts are, like Nellie -Kilpatrick, names and nothing more. Burns’s statement that his -relations with women were entirely innocent until after he met Richard -Brown in 1781 is countered by Brown’s charge that he was already fully -initiated. As Henley says, it is one man’s word against another’s; -since Burns was not in the habit of lying about his own conduct we may -believe him. Where, when, or with whom his initiation took place is -both uncertain and unimportant. His own assertion that he ‘commenced -a fornicator’ with Betty Paton is subject to the discount always to -be charged against poetical versions of prose facts. The certainty -is that the years following his return from Irvine were loaded with -emotional tension by three women--Elizabeth Paton, Mary Campbell, and -Jean Armour. Of the three the one who has received the most attention -probably deserves the least. - -No glamour of romance shields Betty Paton. A servant of his mother’s at -Lochlie and Mossgiel, she succumbed willingly enough to the advances -of the young farmer whom his father’s death had just released from -tutelage, and in due course bore him a daughter in the spring of -1785. According to Gilbert Burns, Robert wanted to marry her, but was -dissuaded by his family, who feared that her coarseness would soon -disgust him. Perhaps so, but the only contemporary letter does not -include matrimonial desire among the feelings it hints at. After the -first embarrassment wore off and he and Betty had duly stood thrice -before the congregation of Mauchline Kirk to be admonished for their -sin, Burns brazened it out to the scandal of his stricter neighbours, -and Betty accepted it resignedly, knowing that such accidents would -happen and that they need not necessarily impair her future career. -Part of her resignation, however, may have been conviction that Robert -Burns had insufficient prospects to make marriage worth fighting for. -In the fall of 1786, when the Kilmarnock _Poems_ had supplied her -erstwhile lover with a little ready cash, Betty promptly demanded -maintenance for herself and her child. In settling the claim Burns -apparently had to pay over rather more than half his profits, besides -legally binding himself for the complete support and education of his -daughter. When on December 1, 1786, she signed with her mark the legal -discharge of her claim, Betty Paton disappeared from Burns’s life. -She was a merry lass; her lover had paid for his fun; the account -was closed--except for the black-eyed little girl being reared by a -long-suffering grandmother at Mossgiel. - -Jean Armour’s case was different, though it commenced, like Betty’s, -in purely physical attraction. To begin with, the status of the girls -was different, even though both were red-knuckled, barefooted country -lasses. Betty was merely a farm servant whose family ties, whatever -they were, were already broken. Jean was the eighteen-year-old daughter -of James Armour, a well-to-do master-mason and contractor in Mauchline. -She was educated to the extent of being able to read the Bible and -write her own name. The story of her first meeting with Burns is -probably legend, yet in spirit the anecdote is at least partly true. -Burns at a village dance, embarrassed by a too-faithful collie which -followed him about the floor, remarked as he expelled the animal -that he wished he could find a lass to love him as well as his dog -did. Whether or not Jean actually asked him a few days later, when he -found her bleaching linen on the green, if he had yet found such a -lass, the fact was that he had. From that moment until his death Jean -lavished upon him a docile and much-enduring devotion which leaves -nothing derogatory in the comparison. She was playing with fire and -must have known it. The scandal of Betty Paton was still fresh; Burns -was a notorious man, glorying in the reputation of village Lothario -and writing verses to warn the Mauchline belles how devastating he -was. Experience had convinced him that all women are sisters under the -skin--a dangerous half-truth which made trouble for him when he met -women of another social level. They may all be sisters under the skin, -but not on it or outside it. The fascination exerted so successfully -over girls of his own class was in fact disastrous training for -subsequent encounters with ladies. A lady may yield to a lover like any -peasant lass, but she expects some finesse in his approach. But in the -summer and autumn of 1785 Burns seemed as likely to enter Edinburgh -drawing-rooms as to enter Parliament. He was merely an unsuccessful -tenant-farmer with a dangerous talent for writing satirical verse and a -dangerous light in his eye when an attractive young woman was in sight. - -Between the tradition of his first meeting with Jean in 1785 and the -beginning of surviving references to the affair in February, 1786, its -history is a blank. On the surface Jean’s experience merely repeated -Betty Paton’s. She surrendered to Burns and in due course endured the -consequences. Yet on Burns’s side the cases were not alike. However -brazenly he may have begun his courtship he soon found that Jean roused -deeper emotions than Betty ever had. His first extant reference to the -affair, apart from verses in praise of Jean’s charms, was on February -17th, 1786, when he told John Richmond--who after a similar scrape -had fled to Edinburgh--that he had important news ‘not of the most -agreable’ with respect to himself. In other words, Jean had told him -she was pregnant. Entirely on his own initiative Burns undertook to do -the right thing he had successfully avoided, or been dissuaded from, -doing for Betty Paton. Sometime in March he gave Jean, if not marriage -lines, at least some written acknowledgement that she was or would be -his wife. That he acted in a certain glow of self-righteousness is -a fair deduction from the violence of his subsequent reaction. Rab -Mossgiel, the village Lothario, had behaved like a man of honour and -expected due recognition of his conduct. - -The recognition he got was humiliating in the extreme. The details can -be reconstructed only by inference from the result. Apparently Jean’s -parents, suspecting her condition, began to question her. She produced -Burns’s written pledge. A domestic storm burst, not so much because -Jean was to bear Burns’s child as because he expected Jean to bear -his name. To James Armour an illegitimate grandchild was preferable to -such a son-in-law as Robert Burns. Jean meekly surrendered her lines to -her father--throughout her life she was usually passive in the hands -of male authority--and Armour carried the document to Burns’s patron -and friend, Robert Aiken, whom he persuaded to cut out the names. Not -the least extraordinary element in the affair is the apparent belief -of a successful lawyer that a contract could be voided merely by -mutilating the written evidence. Armour’s desire publicly to humiliate -Burns was greater than his desire to protect his daughter. He succeeded -admirably. In the same letter in which the poet told Gavin Hamilton -that the document was mutilated he declared he ‘had not a hope or -even a wish to make her mine after her damnable conduct’, yet amid -his execrations he paused to invoke a blessing on his ‘poor once-dear -misguided girl’. The letter was the first of a series of denunciations -and repudiations of Jean much too loud and too shrill to be convincing. -They suggest that Burns had to talk at the top of his voice to maintain -the degree of indifference which he felt self-respect called for. - -Perhaps nothing in Burns’s whole life more completely demonstrates the -impossibility of judging him and the society in which he was reared -by the standards of nineteenth-century middle-class respectability. -When James Armour learned that the subscription for the Kilmarnock -_Poems_ was a success he showed that, though unwilling that his -daughter should bear Burns’s name, he was quite willing she should -share Burns’s money. Accordingly he sued out a writ _in meditatione -fugae_ to require Burns to guarantee the support of Jean’s expected -child. The news reached Burns, probably from Jean herself, and he acted -promptly. By formal deed of assignment he conveyed to Gilbert not only -his share in Mossgiel, but also the entire proceeds of his forthcoming -poems in consideration of Gilbert’s undertaking to provide for Betty -Paton’s child. Burns had checkmated James Armour, and so doing had -almost evened the honours for ungenerous conduct. By nineteenth-century -standards his conduct was caddish, but by the same standards Armour -could have done only one of two things--either expel his daughter from -his home, or protect her technical good name by insisting upon marriage -however distasteful the prospective son-in-law was. But even by his own -standards Burns was acting ignobly. The man who had written - - ‘But devil take the lousy loon - Denies the bairn he got - Or leaves the merry lass he lov’d - To wear a ragged coat,’ - -and who less than six weeks after the deed of assignment eloquently -reproached John Richmond for neglecting his late mistress and future -wife and her baby daughter, was allowing spite to degrade him below the -standards of the class to which he belonged by birth, and much further -below the standards he had consciously set for himself. This was not -acting according to the example of Harley the Man of Feeling. If the -episode stood by itself it might be easier to condone. Unfortunately -it is merely the first conspicuous incident in a series which includes -his remarks about Jean to Clarinda and Bob Ainslie, his neglect of -Jenny Clow, his attack upon dead Mrs. Oswald of Auchencruive, and his -lampoons of Maria Riddell, and which justifies Henley’s phrase that -such things ‘roused the cad’ in Burns. Where women were concerned, it -was always too easy for him to drop the thin cloak of acquired culture -and revert to his peasanthood. - -Alongside the Armour quarrel runs the mystery of Mary Campbell. Burns -himself began the mystery by his curiously veiled allusions to the -affair, but the real work of obfuscation was done by biographers who -erected upon exiguous foundations of fact an ornate superstructure of -legend. - -The exact date at which Burns composed the ‘Jolly Beggars’ is -uncertain--if it was really written after a slumming frolic with John -Richmond it must have been in 1785--but the closing episode is either -autobiography or prophecy. The Bard, whose sentiments in the closing -chorus are definitely Burns’s own, is depicted with a doxy upon either -arm. After the stormy spring and summer of 1786 Burns confessed -to Robert Aiken that he had plunged into all sorts of riot, Mason -meetings, and dissipation, to distract his mind from the humiliation -of the Armour affair. What form his dissipation took may reasonably -be guessed not only from Burns’s own temperament but from human nature -in general. Yet nothing about his relation with Mary Campbell is -free of doubt. All that can definitely be proved is that there was a -servant-lass of that name to whom Burns apparently addressed certain -lyrics and to whom he certainly gave a pair of Bibles bearing peculiar -inscriptions. It is useless to rehearse the endless controversy between -the romantics to whom Mary Campbell was a Lily Maid of Astolat and the -realists to whom she was just another girl who couldn’t say no. But -a few facts must be underscored. The critical analysis of the legend -made with caustic humour by Henley in 1896 and subsequently elaborated -by Professor Snyder has never been rebutted nor even answered. The -scripture texts Burns wrote on the fly-leaves of that Bible are such -as would have been chosen by a man to whom a frightened girl was -appealing for protection and who was impulsively promising it on his -word of honour as a man and a Mason. That he also sang Mary’s praises -as ‘Highland Lassie’ and in another lyric asked--for poetic effect -at least--if she would go to the Indies with him means little, if -anything. The enthusiasts prefer to forget that during the same summer -Burns said farewell to Eliza Miller in a lyric quite as fervid as any -of those addressed to Mary. - -Out of the mass of legend and conjecture the only solid facts which -emerge are that during this spring of 1786 Burns was having some -sort of a love affair with Mary; that she left Ayrshire in May, and -that she died in the early autumn. Burns may have turned to her for -consolation after the breach with Jean; the affairs may have been -simultaneous. Most biographers incline to the sequel theory on the -naïve assumption that love affairs, unlike electric batteries, are -always mounted in series and never in parallel. In view of the social -attitude of the Ayrshire peasantry the question of whether or not Mary -was technically chaste is both metaphysical and irrelevant. Burns’s -attitude toward the other sex was direct; perhaps the strongest -argument for Mary’s chastity would be the complete lack of reference -to her in his contemporary letters, were it not for his subsequent -description of her as ‘as charming a girl as ever blessed a man with -generous love’. Burns ordinarily meant such expressions in the most -literal sense. Despite the evidence in the Bibles that he had tried -again to do the right thing it is hard to believe that in retrospect -Mary would have touched him any more deeply than Jenny Clow or Anne -Park later did had it not been for her untimely death. She certainly -meant little in May and June of 1786. In the same month in which he -gave her the Bible he composed the long and bawdy ‘Court of Equity’; -throughout the summer his letters to his intimates mingle execration, -devotion, and regret for Jean Armour in precisely the same tones he -had used in April. A man who had really found an adequate new love -might be supposed to speak of the old one as Burns had spoken of Peggy -Thomson in 1784. Resentment of the Armours’ conduct might explain -the execration, but hardly the regret and certainly not the devotion. -If Burns really intended to make a new start in Jamaica with Mary -Campbell, it is strange indeed that he never hinted of it to his -friends--unless we accept the tradition, reported at second hand from -John Richmond, that Mary was a light-skirts whose character Richmond -and some other friends exposed to the poet. In that case, he would have -had good reason for silence. - -When in October he summed up his situation in a long letter to Robert -Aiken it was still Jean who was the cause of his secret wretchedness -and who was the source of ‘the pang of disappointment, the sting of -pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse’. The sole passage in -the letter which Snyder thought might apply to Mary--‘I have seen -something of the storm of mischief thickening over my folly-devoted -head’--may now be interpreted as referring instead to the disconcerting -reappearance of Betty Paton as a claimant for support. The sole -evidence surviving from 1786, apart from Burns’s lyrics, is his -sister’s story, told many years after his death, that one day in -October he received a letter which he read with a look of agony and -then crushed into his pocket as he silently left the house. Connecting -this story with Burns’s later statement that ‘a malignant fever hurried -my dear girl to her grave before I could even hear of her illness’, -biographers have assumed that the painful letter bore the news of -Mary’s death. But this, even granting perfect reliability to Isabella -Begg’s memory, is pure assumption. Burns’s sole references to her -were written from three to five years after the supposed event. With -one exception they were intended for the mystification rather than the -enlightenment of Robert Riddell and George Thomson. That exception is -the composition of ‘Thou Lingering Star’ and the letter to Mrs. Dunlop -which accompanied it--both of them written in a neurotic state close to -complete nervous breakdown. The Highland Mary we know is the creation -of biographers, and should be suffered to abide in the Never-Never Land -of romance. The truth about the Burns of flesh and blood had better be -sought in his relations with flesh and blood women. - -In these relations there were three main degrees. The foremost group -consists of women who profoundly stirred him, and on whom for a time -at least he concentrated his intellect and his affections as well as -his desires. In this group belong Jean Armour, Margaret Chalmers, -Clarinda, and probably Maria Riddell. Next come the women who engaged -his passing fancy, and for whom he felt some tenderness, but who did -not influence him deeply or long. Among these are Betty Paton, Anne -Park, Jean Lorimer, and Jessie Lewars. A woman who appealed to Burns on -either of these bases need not have been his mistress; in fact, only -three of those named ever yielded to him. But below these was a third -group, represented by Meg Cameron and Jenny Clow, who were mistresses -and nothing more--the mere conveniences of the moment. These last -never roused even a momentary spark of poetry in their lover. Judged -purely on the basis of literary by-product, Mary Campbell belongs in -the second group, but not in the first. Even her most ardent champion -might hesitate to assert that any lyric addressed to her is the equal -of ‘Ae fond kiss’ or ‘Of a’ the airts’. Jessie Lewars and Jean Lorimer -both inspired better songs than Mary ever did. - -But Burns’s tenderness, even for the women who meant most to him, was -often of a peculiar sort. Though he told Deborah Davies that ‘Woman -is the blood-royal of life; let there be slight degrees of precedency -among them, but let them all be sacred’, his practice was more -accurately summarized in what he said about love in confiding to George -Thomson his admiration for Jean Lorimer: - - ‘... I am a very Poet in my enthusiasm of the Passion.--The welfare - & happiness of the beloved Object, is the _first & inviolate_ - sentiment that pervades my soul; & whatever pleasures I might wish - for, or whatever might be the raptures they would give me, yet, if - they interfere & clash with that _first_ principle, it is having - these pleasures at a dishonest price; & Justice forbids, & Generosity - disdains the purchase!--As to the herd of the Sex, who are good for - little or nothing else, I have made no such agreement with myself; but - where the Parties are capable of, & the Passion is, the true Divinity - of love--the man who can act otherwise than as I have laid down, is a - Villain!--’ - -One fears that Burns remained on these chivalrous heights only when -the woman was unattainable; should she yield to him, she would too -readily take her place among ‘the herd of the Sex’. Certainly he -freely discussed his loves not only among his male friends but with a -patroness like Mrs. Dunlop. When, for instance, after his conquering -hero’s return to Mauchline in June, 1787, the Armours bade him welcome -and Jean succumbed once more, he lost no time in reporting the victory -to Smith and Ainslie. To put it briefly, beneath the veneer of -sentiment, beneath even the poetic response, Burns’s attitude towards -women of his own age was the elemental possessiveness which regards sex -primarily as a ribald jest. His sincerest tenderness belonged to no -woman as deeply as it did to his children, however or wherever begotten. - -Burns never revealed more truly his own feelings than in the ‘Poet’s -Welcome to his Bastart Wean’ which hailed the birth of his eldest -child, Betty Paton’s daughter. Its mixture of bawdry with affection, of -rollicking defiance of the unco guid with exultant pride in paternity, -may distress the tender-minded who prefer not to admit the existence -in parental relations of even a sublimated carnality, but it is the -very essence of Burns himself. His plainest expressions of his love -for his children occur not in letters to women but in letters to his -most intimate male friends, and often amid flagrant ribaldry. It was -not to Mrs. Dunlop that he wrote that Jean’s first twins ‘awakened a -thousand feelings that thrill, some with tender pleasure and some with -foreboding anguish, thro’ my soul’; it was to Robert Muir, companion -of his revels and recipient of broad jests. Robert Aiken was told that -the feelings of a father outweighed in Burns all the sound reasoning -and all the bitter memories that joined in urging him to carry through -the Jamaica project. ‘God bless them, poor little dears!’ he exclaimed -to John Richmond on reporting the birth of the twins. Such remarks to -men before whom he had no motive for acting a part, are more convincing -proof of real feelings than are the dissertations, garnished with -quotations from James Thomson’s dramas, on parental anxieties in his -letters to Mrs. Dunlop. - -Especially notable is the letter he wrote to Bob Ainslie on August -1, 1787, in response to the latter’s announcement of the birth of an -illegitimate son. Beginning, ‘Give you joy, give you joy, my dear -brother!’ he goes on to say that he has ‘double health and spirits -at the news’, and to welcome Ainslie to ‘the society, the venerable -Society of Fathers’. There follow eight lines of the metrical version -of Psalm 127, obviously quoted with as much sincerity as when he later -used it, in quite different context, in writing to John M’Auley. -He continues, ‘My ailing child is got better, and the Mother is -certainly in for it again, and Peggy [Meg Cameron] will bring me a half -Highlandman’, and announces his intention of getting a farm, bringing -them all up in fear of the Lord and of a good oak stick, and of being -the happiest man alive. Then the letter shifts to snatches of bawdy -song, some quoted, others apparently impromptu. This primitive joy -in paternity, this exultation over the mere fact of birth, whether -the child was his own or another’s, was part of his heritage from the -Scottish soil. The same spirit shows three years later in his reply to -Mrs. Dunlop’s news that her widowed daughter Mrs. Henri had borne a -posthumous son: - - ‘... I literally, _jumped for joy_--how could such a mercurial - creature as a Poet, lumpishly keep his seat on the receipt of the best - news from his best Friend--I seized my gilt-headed Wangee rod, an - instrument indispensably necessary in my left hand in the moment of - Inspiration & Rapture--and stride--stride--quick & quicker--out skipt - I among the broomy banks of Nith to muse over my joy by retail.’ - -Nor did his paternal emotions dissipate themselves in rejoicings over -birth. Testimony abounds of his devotion to his children, his concern -over their proper education, his anxiety for their futures. James Gray -on evening visits in Dumfries found him explaining poetry to the eldest -boy and hearing him recite his lessons; Maria Riddell was impressed -by his constant devotion to the children’s welfare. But towards their -mothers, once the fancy had passed, he was indifferent. ‘I am very -sorry for it, but what is done is done’, he said of Meg Cameron, and -though Clarinda’s rebuke stung him into something like remorse for -his treatment of Jenny Clow, even there his last thought was for his -son: ‘I would have taken my boy from her long ago, but she would never -consent.’ The one possible exception to his generalization was Jean -Armour, but Jean’s later history belongs elsewhere, beside Clarinda’s. - -In brief, Burns’s experience among women up to his departure for -Edinburgh had made him the ‘magerfu’’ man Sentimental Tommy had -longed to be. His love-making might involve him in tangles which he -was neither astute nor callous enough to avoid, but he had found his -attraction enhanced by his reputation as a dangerous man. He had -learned the value of aggressiveness; he had not learned finesse. When -he met ladies his lack sooner or later became painfully evident. - -Among women of the upper classes he was at his best in association with -those whose interest was motherly rather than actually or potentially -amorous. Before going to Edinburgh he had charmed middle-aged Mrs. -Stewart of Stair as well as mature Mrs. Lawrie, wife of the minister of -Loudoun, and had begun with Mrs. Dunlop a correspondence which ended -only on his deathbed. In its progress this friendship reveals much of -what was best in his relations with women; in the estrangement which -interrupted it it reveals also his shortcomings. Since, moreover, -it is the only one of his friendships in which both sides of the -correspondence have been preserved, no guess-work is required in -tracing its rise and decline. - -Frances Anna Wallace Dunlop belonged by both birth and marriage to the -old landed gentry of Scotland, and claimed collateral descent from -Sir William Wallace. In the autumn of 1786 her mind was ‘in a state -which, had it long continued my only refuge would inevitably have been -a mad-house or a grave; nothing interested or amused me; all around -me served to probe a wound whose recent stab was mortal to my peace, -and had already ruined my health and benumbed my senses.’ Grief at -her husband’s recent death had something to do with it, but the chief -wound was her eldest son’s extravagance and marital scandals. About -the beginning of November a copy of the Kilmarnock _Poems_ reached her -and her reading of them--significantly enough it was ‘The Cotter’s -Saturday Night’ and other poems based on the genteel tradition of -eighteenth-century poetry that won her admiration--roused her to fresh -interest in life. ‘The poignancy of your expression’, as she put -it, ‘soothed my soul.’ To one reading her letters without reference -to her age she often sounds like a decrepit and almost dying woman. -Actually when she began writing to Burns she was only fifty-six, and -she outlived him by nineteen years. She opened the correspondence -with an order for six copies of the poems; the flattered poet could -scrape together only five, which he dispatched with a complimentary -letter that included the news that he was planning a second edition in -Edinburgh. Mrs. Dunlop immediately elected herself one of his chief -advisers, and among other things suggested that in revising his poems -he should avoid describing her great ancestor as ‘unhappy Wallace’ and -should make the Twa Dogs sit down more decorously. Later she offered -the two most inept of all the recorded plans for the poet’s future. -In February, 1787, she proposed that he should use the proceeds of -his Edinburgh subscription to buy a commission in the army. The man -who wrote ‘I murder hate by field or flood’ and whose dislike for -‘the lobster-coated puppies’ of the army more than once got him into -hot water would have cut a strange figure in any officers’ mess. On -April 1, 1789, she suggested his applying for the newly established -Professorship of Agriculture at Edinburgh University. The self-taught -peasant would have cut a still stranger figure as the colleague of -Robertson, Cullen, and Blair. - -The history of the first few months of his friendship with Mrs. Dunlop -reveals how far Burns was from understanding the finer points of -etiquette. To begin with he ignored her suggestions for altering his -poems. True, he could do nothing else. Her advice was merely typical of -what genteel Scotland thought about his work. To accept all emendations -would have reduced his poems to namby-pamby; to accept some and reject -others would have doubly offended those whose criticism he ignored. -But he should have explained this to Mrs. Dunlop, and did not. Her -vexation at the discovery was intensified by an innocent blunder he -made in arranging for the delivery of copies she had ordered for her -stepmother, the dowager Lady Wallace of Craigie. The copies went -instead to the estranged wife of her eldest son, also a Lady Wallace -but regarded by her mother-in-law as the worst blemish the family tree -had ever suffered. - -Their relations were first put on a really cordial basis when Burns -visited her at Dunlop House in July, 1787. Annoyance at his social -blunders evaporated before the charm of his personality, and thereafter -the correspondence on both sides took a new tone of affection and -esteem. Her interest in Burns was generous and motherly. She plied him -with good advice, which he generally ignored, and frequently added -substantial help with both money and influence. Towards her Burns seems -to have felt as many a man does towards his mother--she bored him but -he loved her. She often accused him, no doubt justly, of not reading -her letters. They were long, tedious, and wholly unpunctuated; he -probably glanced over them when they arrived and then laid them aside -for more careful reading at a leisure hour which never came. But though -he seldom answered her questions he took her unreservedly into his -confidence--or almost unreservedly. He never did more than hint about -Clarinda, but he told her everything about Jean. In fact he must have -told almost too much; it is hard otherwise to explain his embarrassment -over breaking the news that he had finally married the girl who had -borne him ‘twice twins in seventeen months’. - -By the beginning of 1788 the friendship was so firmly established -as to survive a most humiliating incident. When he visited Dunlop -House on his way back from Edinburgh in February his reception was -warm and flattering. Mrs. Dunlop’s unmarried daughters were agog with -admiration. Miss Rachel was hard at work on a painting of his muse, -Coila, as to whose appearance she sought the poet’s expert advice. Miss -Keith discussed poetry with him and revealed the somewhat surprising -fact that she had never read Gray. Before he left he had promised to -lend the ladies his copy of Spenser, a recent gift from William Dunbar -of Edinburgh. When a few days later he fulfilled his promise he added -to the parcel a copy of Gray as a present for Miss Keith, only to learn -that a plebeian poet must not presume too far. Mrs. Dunlop replied that -she did not allow her daughter to receive presents from men who were -not members of her own family, and proposed either to return the whole -book or at most to permit Miss Keith to tear out the pages containing -the poems she liked best. That Burns continued in friendship with Mrs. -Dunlop after this rebuff is eloquent proof of the esteem in which he -held her; he had lampooned others of the gentry for less. - -Not that this was the only time when Mrs. Dunlop made him conscious -of the difference in their ranks. Her occasional gift of a five-pound -note, though usually tactfully designated as for some special purpose -or occasion, always hurt his pride--the more so because he could not -deny that he needed the money. He silently drew the line, however, -when she proposed, in one of those fits of economy which sometimes -afflict the well-to-do, that he help to sell some decorative fringe -which she had been manufacturing. Over this as over others of his sins -of omission she displayed an irritability more like a schoolgirl’s -than a grandmother’s; most schoolgirlish in its evanescence. A thorough -scolding which sounded like a total breach of relations would be -countered by some new poems or new compliments from Burns, and her next -letter would contain a five-pound note for the latest baby. - -Though as Burns became more heavily burdened with labour and -responsibility his letters grew shorter and fewer than at the peak -of the correspondence during the summer of 1788, no serious rift -appeared until December, 1792. When it came it was the result of -Burns’s pride working in combination with his want of tact. Among -the servants on Mrs. Dunlop’s estate was a milkmaid named Jenny -Little, whom Burns’s success had inspired to burst into rime. Burns -had already endured a good deal of her output, both from manuscripts -sent to him by Mrs. Dunlop and from a pilgrimage of adoration which -Jenny had made to Ellisland in 1790--an unsuccessful pilgrimage, for -she had found the poet laid up with a broken arm and in no mood for -entertaining an aspiring poetess. When Burns reached Dunlop in 1792 he -found his patroness’s interest in her protégée still unshaken. With -her assistance Jenny had recently printed her poems, and Mrs. Dunlop -produced the volume with the request that Burns give his opinion of -certain of the verses which she pointed out. He said, ‘Do I have to -read all those?’ in a tone which she afterwards described as the -equivalent of a slap in the face. - -It was supreme tactlessness. Burns was bored and showed it. A more -politic man would have waded through the verses however much his jaw -might ache with suppressed yawns. But boredom was not the worst aspect -of the incident from Burns’s point of view: his pride was wounded. Of -all his patrons in the upper ranks of society Mrs. Dunlop alone had -kept up her interest in him and had appeared to treat him as an equal. -Now she unconsciously revealed that she saw no _essential_ difference -between his writing and Jenny Little’s. To her he was after all merely -a peasant poet with the accent on the adjective; the difference between -him and Jenny Little was a difference in degree and not in kind. Both -wrote in dialect; she failed to see that one wrote Scots poetry and the -other Scots twaddle. - -The incident illustrates once more what Maria Riddell meant when she -described Burns as devoid in great measure of refinement and social -graces. The abrupt and masterful manner, successful with the girls of -his own original class, sooner or later annoyed other ladies besides -the Duchess of Gordon. Mrs. Dunlop, however, did not allow her vexation -to cause an immediate coolness; she contented herself with a lengthy -silence followed by an explanation of her reasons for being offended. -Yet when the real break came two years later Burns’s unbridled tongue -and pen were again at fault. Mrs. Dunlop heartily disapproved of his -sympathy with the French Revolution, and had warned him more than once -to drop the subject in his letters. Inasmuch as four of her sons and -one grandson were or had been in the army and two of her daughters -were married to French royalist refugees, Burns should have known that -her sympathies would be Tory. Yet in face of her warnings he wrote -in January, 1794, the most outspoken of all his political remarks, -describing Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as a perjured blockhead -and an unprincipled prostitute who had met their deserved fate at -the hangman’s hands, and adding a guarded hope that revolutionary -principles might have more scope in England. This time Mrs. Dunlop -broke off the correspondence. Though Burns made two attempts during -the next year to reopen it, she maintained dogged silence until his -pathetic letter of farewell, written on his deathbed, at last broke -down her reserve. Her letter of reconciliation was almost the last -message which reached him before his death. For a century charitable -biographers conjectured that the estrangement must have been due to the -lady’s hearing reports that Burns was living an evil life in Dumfries. -The recovery of the complete text of his letter of January, 1794, -revealed the simple truth that the breach resulted from nothing more -serious than a failure in tact. There, as always, his trouble came -because he had not taken heed to his ways, that he offend not with his -tongue. - -The same trouble underlay his relations with other women of a rank -above his own--Margaret Chalmers, Agnes M’Lehose, and Maria Riddell, -though in different ways and different degrees. With Margaret Chalmers, -indeed, he maintained for a couple of years the nearest approach he -ever made to a non-flirtatious friendship with a woman of his own -age, but of the three just named this clever daughter of a gentleman -farmer in Ayrshire was the least removed in station from himself. -Unfortunately, only Burns’s side of the correspondence survives, and -that in fragments. Apparently it began, as usual, with love-making, but -when Margaret gently put a stop to that--probably by telling Burns that -she was already engaged to Lewis Hay, whom she married in 1788--their -relation ripened into a genuine friendship which produced what Cromek -rightly called some of the best letters Burns ever wrote. The poet took -her unreservedly into his confidence about his troubles with Creech -and his anxiety over his future, so that his three or four letters to -her during the height of his correspondence with Clarinda come like -a breath of bleak but pure air in that hothouse atmosphere. But the -friendship ended, apparently through Burns’s neglect. Two years after -her marriage he sent regards to her through another friend, and called -himself a wretch for not writing her, but seemingly he could not write -when he felt that his confidences might be shared with her husband. An -estranged husband would not have mattered, as his flirtation with Agnes -M’Lehose proved. - -The Clarinda episode has more prominence in most accounts of Burns than -it deserves. In its beginning and growth it was in fact quite untypical -of the man--his one intensive effort to act a part not natural to -him. Its development in this way was mainly the result of the accident -which threw him back on letter-writing instead of speech in conducting -his suit. Agnes M’Lehose when Burns met her was a plump young matron -about his own age. Born Agnes Craig of Glasgow and a relative of one of -the Lords of Session, she had married in romantic haste at the age of -seventeen a young lawyer named James M’Lehose, and when Burns met her -had already had eleven years of leisure to repent. Her husband, after -abusing and neglecting her and getting into debt and disgrace, had -at last been exiled by indignant relatives to Jamaica--that tropical -refuge for Britons who had made their native climate too hot for -them. His wife, trying to rear three sickly children on a microscopic -annuity, had turned for consolation to literature and religion. In -the latter she had espoused under the dynamic preaching of the Rev. -John Kemp the strictest tenets of Calvinism; in the former she had -familiarized herself with the most elegant authors of the day and -had taken to versifying occasionally with the fluency and inaccuracy -prevalent among women poets prior to Christina Rossetti and Emily -Brontë. Like most of Edinburgh in 1787 she had been eager to meet -Burns. When at last she did so at a tea-party given by her friend, Miss -Erskine Nimmo, she and Burns became so visibly absorbed in each other -as to rouse the amusement of the other guests. The poet’s experiences -hitherto with young women of the upper classes had been disappointing. -They were polite and attentive, but reserved. Here at last was an -indubitable lady, and a young and attractive one at that, who displayed -something like the enthusiastic attention he had been accustomed to -receive from the belles of Mauchline. Before the tea was over Burns had -accepted Mrs. M’Lehose’s invitation to a party of her own. If ever a -woman threw herself at a man’s head Agnes M’Lehose did, and Burns was -not the man to refuse such a challenge. A letter to Richard Brown in -the early days of his infatuation leaves no doubt that he thought he -had made a conquest; but he had reckoned without Clarinda’s Calvinism -and her social traditions. - -The affair might have spent itself in a passing flirtation had not -chance, in the form of a drunken driver who overturned a coach and -dislocated the poet’s knee, confined him to his room for several -weeks. His note explaining and deploring his inability to attend the -tea-party was answered by one offering sympathy and regret. Burns and -Mrs. M’Lehose both wielded free-flowing pens; their correspondence -rapidly gained momentum and fervour. By the third exchange of letters -she felt it her duty to remind him that she was a married woman. The -result may or may not have been what she intended. Assuring her that -his intentions were strictly honourable Burns seized the opportunity -to express far more ardent chivalry and devotion than he would -probably have ventured on had she been free. In reply she suggested -their writing under Arcadian pseudonyms--no doubt as evidence of -the strictly Platonic nature of their sentiments; displayed her -acquaintance with _The Spectator_ by calling herself Clarinda; and -suggested Sylvander for Burns. Having thus safely wrapped their -correspondence in asbestos they relaxed in a vapour-bath of emotion. - -Less than three weeks after Burns’s accident he was assuring Clarinda -that she was a gloriously amiable fine woman and was promising -life-long devotion. But he was not admitting her as yet into his -inner doubts and perplexities. Margaret Chalmers was the only woman -who shared those. In fact both Sylvander and Clarinda seemed to have -reserved their more intimate communications for personal speech. -Apparently not until their long-deferred second meeting in January did -Burns tell her about Jean and his children and Clarinda give him the -whole tale of her unhappy marriage. She also sought in both speech and -writing to convert him to Mr. Kemp’s particular brand of Calvinism. But -here even at the height of his infatuation she failed. The most she got -was a partial recantation of his liking for the heroic qualities of -Milton’s Satan. - -So long as communication was limited to pen and ink the affair for -Burns was little more than a literary exercise. After they began to -meet it became different and, in its effects on him, worse. Physical -nearness could not fail to stir a man of his temperament. Soon their -conversation was supplemented by caresses which Clarinda, however, -managed to keep within bounds. As a result, Burns left these interviews -with his blood at fever heat. A servant-girl named Jenny Clow, -successor to the Meg Cameron of the previous winter, provided the -consummation which Clarinda denied, and in due course added yet another -to his growing list of paternal, legal, and emotional perplexities. - -Clarinda was of course unaware of Jenny’s existence, but she soon had -other reasons for being uncomfortable. Edinburgh was not a city in -which a gentlewoman could be indiscreet and get away with it. More -than a dozen years later Euphemia Boswell told Joseph Farington that -Edinburgh’s chief drawback was that everybody knew all his neighbours’ -affairs. The poet’s visits to the Potterrow were freely discussed. Lord -Craig heard of them and was annoyed by his kinswoman’s indiscretion; -the Rev. Mr. Kemp heard of them and felt it his duty to admonish his -parishioner. When Clarinda confided these troubles to Burns they of -course roused him to new fervours of knight-errantry. Moreover, other -agitations were intensifying the emotional stress of the love affair. -A great lady named Mrs. Stewart who was expected to help his Excise -project chose to lecture him on the error of his ways; rumours were -afloat that William Creech was insolvent; above all there was bad -news from Mauchline. Jean’s parents had this time chosen the heavy -melodramatic role and had bidden their erring daughter not to darken -their doors again. She was being sheltered by friendly Mrs. Muir of -Tarbolton Mill, but her future was black. In these circumstances it is -unjust in the extreme to judge Burns’s conduct by the cool standards -of sobriety and sanity. The man was in such a state of frenzy that he -cannot be held accountable for his words nor even for all his actions. - -What had begun as a flirtation and had continued, in part at least, -as a piece of play-acting had by the middle of February become an -imbroglio. Burns and Clarinda, both of them sentimentalists whose -roused emotions were stronger than their reason, had gone so far that -they could no longer regard their relations as simple friendship. By -the time Burns set out on the 18th for Mauchline by way of Glasgow he -had indulged in a perfect delirium of sentiment and rash vows. If he -had not actually pledged himself to wait until James M’Lehose should be -considerate enough to die and leave Clarinda free to marry Sylvander it -at least appears that she expected him to wait. Meanwhile they were to -write to each other every day. - -The artificial and hothouse nature of the affair is fully demonstrated -by the change which came over Burns’s letters as soon as removal from -Edinburgh plunged him into the chilly air of everyday. The promise of -a daily letter was the first to fail. Burns reached Glasgow on the -evening of the 18th to find Richard Brown awaiting him at the Black -Bull Inn in the company of young William Burns, who had ridden up from -Mauchline with his brother’s horse. Before settling to a convivial -evening Burns managed to dispatch a hurried note to Clarinda, but it -was four days before he found time to write again. His next letter -shows how effectively those four days had brought him back from a -sentimental dream-world to crude reality. Doubtless William had brought -the latest bulletins about Jean, but no hint of them was passed on to -Clarinda. A feverish day of entertainment among the prosperous weavers -of Paisley was followed by two days of more decorous pleasure at -Dunlop House and then by another wild bout at Kilmarnock. The letter -from Kilmarnock is devoted mainly to a broadly humorous account of -his Paisley host’s troubles with a daughter who had been to boarding -school, a son who wanted a latchkey, and himself who thought it better -to re-marry than to burn. Not a word about Jean, scarcely a word about -worthy Mrs. Dunlop and none about artistic Miss Rachel and poetic Miss -Keith--in short, just such a letter as Burns might have written to -Bob Ainslie or Alexander Cunningham, and in comparison with all the -previous Clarinda correspondence as inappropriate as Falstaff in love. - -But this letter jars on the reader only because it is wrong in its -context. Two which he wrote after his arrival at Mauchline on the -23rd jar for a different reason. Only one of these, however, was to -Clarinda. She had given him a couple of little shirts for Baby Robert, -who was being cared for at Mossgiel. As soon as he had delivered these -and seen his family, Burns set off to interview ‘a certain woman’ at -Tarbolton Mill. ‘I am disgusted with her; I cannot endure her! I, -while my heart smote me for the prophanity, tried to compare her with -my Clarinda: ’twas setting the expiring glimmer of a farthing taper -beside the cloudless glory of the meridian sun. Here was tasteless -insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary fawning; there, polished -good sense, heaven-born genius, and the most generous, the most -delicate, the most tender Passion. I have done with her and she with -me.’ - -Of the many things in Burns’s life which might better have been left -unsaid or undone this letter might claim first place were it not for -the one he wrote to Bob Ainslie ten days later. Here he describes his -reconciliation with Jean. What makes this letter revolting is not so -much its biological detail as the realization that the alleged events -which Burns describes occurred less than a fortnight before Jean’s -confinement. On March 3 she again bore her lover twins, who did not -live even long enough to be baptized. Still worse, if it is true, is -his assertion that he had sworn Jean ‘privately and solemnly never -to attempt any claim on me as a husband, even though anybody should -persuade her she had such a claim, which she has not, neither during my -life nor after my death. She did all this like a good girl....’ Here, -however, it is more than possible that he was talking brazenly for -Ainslie’s edification; Henley’s doubt that Mrs. Armour could have been -reconciled to her daughter without a promise of marriage seems well -founded. Moreover the statement proves that by this time, whatever he -may have thought in 1786, Burns realized that the destruction of the -original marriage lines had not necessarily voided the contract. - -Whatever he said or did at his first interview with Jean he must, -before he returned to Edinburgh in March, have made up his mind that -sooner or later he would acknowledge Jean as his wife. The letters to -Clarinda during the remaining two weeks of his absence were noticeably -lacking in fervour. They contained, however, more news about his -personal affairs, especially the doubts and uncertainties that still -kept him hesitating between farming and the Excise, than any of the -earlier ones did. An unsolved mystery in his life is the nature of his -relations with Clarinda during the fortnight he spent in Edinburgh -in March. To the modern reader with full knowledge of the facts the -fervour of his latest letters seems still more forced and artificial -than before, but it may be questioned if this truth was equally obvious -to Clarinda. Indeed their final meeting, at which Burns presented her -with a pair of drinking-glasses, a poem, and an inscribed copy of -Young’s ‘Night Thoughts’, clearly had enough romantic intensity to -satisfy even Clarinda. Herein lies the mystery. The later developments -prove that Burns had told her nothing of his reconciliation with Jean, -yet Burns was not a man who could ordinarily act a part convincingly. -This time he must have tried. The results, combined with anxiety over -livelihood, are displayed in a letter of March 20, in which he told -Richard Brown that worry over his lease, ‘racking shop accounts’ with -Creech, ‘together with watching, fatigue, and a load of care almost too -heavy for my shoulders, have in some degree actually fever’d me.... -These eight days, I have been positively crazed.’ - -He returned to Mauchline on the 22d to receive his six weeks of -Excise instructions, publicly to acknowledge Jean as his wife, and -incidentally to compose a formula whereby to explain his action to his -friends and patrons: - - ‘I had a long and much-loved fellow creature’s happiness or misery - in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a - deposite.’ - -This statement with only slight variations he used to half-a-dozen -different correspondents. Whether he used it to Clarinda or not is -uncertain; he may have entrusted Ainslie with the delicate task of -breaking the news. However the news reached her, it quite naturally -angered her. If Burns wrote it to her she destroyed the letter, and we -know that he destroyed her reply calling him a Villain and accusing him -of perfidious treachery. When he visited Edinburgh again in February, -1789, she refused to see him and told Ainslie that she intended to keep -away from her windows while he was in town lest she catch a glimpse of -him in the street. - -In the fall of 1791, however, she had a chance to reopen the -correspondence. Jenny Clow in June, 1788, had undertaken some sort of -legal action against Burns and one purpose of his return to Edinburgh -in the following February had been to settle with her. Whatever the -nature of the settlement it had not helped much. When in 1791 Jenny -somehow communicated with Clarinda, the latter found the girl ill, -destitute, and friendless, in a miserable lodging. Clarinda’s discovery -of the means whereby Sylvander had managed to keep his courtship on -so lofty a plane must have been humiliating and disillusioning, but -she was woman enough to turn her discovery to account. Her letter to -Burns described Jenny’s condition briefly and effectively and suggested -that there was a striking contrast between his practice and the high -principles of generosity and humanity which he professed. She meant -her letter to sting, and it did. Burns begged her to relieve Jenny’s -immediate needs and promised personal action at the first opportunity. -At this point Jenny vanishes from the record. What Burns did, whether -Jenny lived or died, whether her son lived or died, if he lived what -became of him--all these are questions without answers. - -Meanwhile Clarinda had been attempting to re-establish her own life. -Her husband had sought a reconciliation, and she was planning to -join him in Jamaica. When Burns made his last visit to Edinburgh in -November, 1791, her departure was already arranged. She was fully -reconciled to Sylvander now, and for the first time their relationship -revealed simple and genuine emotion. The Arcadian names vanished in -the correspondence; she became ‘my dearest Nancy’ instead of Clarinda, -and when Burns returned to Dumfries, fully convinced that he had said -farewell forever, he produced the one really first-rate lyric Clarinda -ever inspired--‘Ae Fond Kiss, and Then We Sever’. - -The sequel was the last of the anti-climaxes which marked the affair. -Clarinda reached Jamaica to find James M’Lehose’s disposition not -sweetened by time, and a brood of mulatto children proved that he had -not suffered by her absence. She returned to Scotland on the same -ship which took her out. For some time after her return she did not -communicate with Burns. When she did so it was in terms of cautious -esteem which inspired him to so bombastic a reply that he shortly -afterwards tried to disguise its date by describing a transcript of -it as ‘the fustian rant of enthusiastic youth’. The first part of the -description is accurate. For Burns the episode was closed, and closed, -as it had opened, in posturing affectation of emotion. But Clarinda -lived on it for the rest of her long life, exhibiting his letters to -her friends after his death until some of them were worn to tatters. -Her caution, however, equalled her vanity. After some of the letters -had been surreptitiously transcribed and published in 1802 she went -over the manuscripts, destroying the addresses, scoring out or clipping -away proper names and erasing some of the more ardent love-making, and -being reduced at last in senile old-age to selling some of them for a -few shillings each. Sylvander’s was the happier fate after all. - -Meanwhile, whatever bombast or adoration her husband was addressing to -Clarinda, the ‘certain woman’ was lavishing on Burns the devotion he -had wished for at his first meeting. Various stories are told of how -and when he acknowledged Jean as his wife. The probability is that he -never did so, in the sense of going through a formal marriage service. -On April 28th he confided to James Smith that ‘Mrs. Burns’ was Jean’s -‘private designation’; a month later, in a letter to Ainslie, he avowed -the title ‘to the World’. By Scots law, avowal in the presence of -witnesses constituted a legal, though irregular, marriage; a peculiar -letter to Smith at the end of June suggests that Burns even evaded this -legal requirement: - - ‘I have waited on Mr. Auld about my Marriage affair, & stated that - I was legally fined for an irregular marriage by a Justice of - the Peace.--He says if I bring an attestation of this by the two - witnesses, there shall be no more litigation about it.--As soon as - this comes to hand, please write me in the way of familiar Epistle - that, “Such things are.”’ - -In other words, he was asking Smith--who had not lived in Mauchline for -two years--to testify, but not on oath, that Burns had acknowledged the -marriage in his presence. Armed with Smith’s letter, and another, he -then presented himself again before the minister, who overlooked the -doubtful legality of the evidence as two years before he had allowed -Burns’s doubtful status as a bachelor. On August 5th Burns and Jean -made their formal appearance before the Kirk Session, avowed their -marriage as of 1786, and were readmitted to the communion after ‘Mr. -Burns gave a Guinea note for the behoof of the Poor.’ - -All this time Burns was alternating between Mauchline and Ellisland, -to the detriment of his interests in each place. A man absent from his -farm every other fortnight could scarcely expect work to go forward -quickly, but there were no living accommodations for Jean and young -Robert until in October a neighbour, moving into Dumfries for the -winter, offered Burns the use of his house. But the periods of absence -roused Burns once more to lyric fervour for Jean, and the man who six -months earlier had pledged undying devotion to Clarinda composed ‘Of a’ -the airts’ in tribute to his wife. - -But it was the last song that can with complete certainty be connected -with Jean. She sank before long to the status of a hard-working, -child-bearing domestic fixture, losing her good looks--at first sight -of her in 1790 John Syme concluded that Burns’s lyrics in her praise -were poetic licence--but keeping her equable temper and her devotion -to her husband. Of all the women who had loved Burns more or less, and -whom he, more or less, had loved, she alone had to live with him. And -yet she continued to love him, not weighing his merits, but pardoning -his offences. She had things to pardon, though when he married her -Burns thought he had shaken himself ‘loose of a very bad failing.’ -Eighteen months after this announcement of reformation, Jean went home -to Ayrshire for a visit, and her husband strayed into the arms of Anne -Park at the Globe Inn. When the blonde barmaid in due course bore him -a child, and died in doing it, Jean took in the little girl and reared -her with ‘no distinction shown between that and the rest of their -children.’ Maria Riddell, whose words are just quoted, added that Burns -told her the story ‘with much sensibility’. - -Burns could not take Jean into the society to which he was himself -admitted, so she remained unnoticed at home, tending the children and -keeping the house in slatternly Scots fashion, but with a sober Scots -thrift which probably accounted for her husband’s living within his -income and at last dying with little more than the debts incurred -during his final illness. Burns seldom spoke of her in his last years, -but when he did so it was ‘with a high tribute of respect and esteem’. -Maria Riddell--perhaps a prejudiced witness--states that ‘he did -not love her, but he was far from insensible to the indulgence and -patience, “the meekness with which she bore her faculties” on many -occasions very trying to the tempers of most individuals of our sex.’ -One suspects, sometimes, that Burns would never have continued to love -any woman after he had won her; that no matter who she was, he might -still have summed up his marriage as he did to John Beugo: - - ‘Depend upon it, if you do not make some damned foolish choice, - [marriage] will be a very great improvement on the Dish of Life.--I - can speak from Experience, tho’ God knows my choice was random as - Blind-man’s buff. I like the idea of an honest country Rake of my - acquaintance, who, like myself, married lately.--Speaking to me of - his late step, “L--d, man,” says he, “a body’s baith cheaper and - better sair’t!”’-- - -Maria Riddell may have been one reason for Burns’s abrupt closure of -the correspondence with Clarinda in 1793. After Clarinda had refused -to continue it as an emotional communion he no longer needed it as an -intellectual one. He had found a woman friend who surpassed Clarinda as -much in intellect as she did in social position, and the only occasion -on which he reopened communications with Agnes M’Lehose was during his -subsequent estrangement from Mrs. Riddell--when he used the opportunity -to send Clarinda copies of the crude lampoons he had composed upon -Maria. - -Walter Riddell, younger brother of Burns’s friend at Friars Carse, -had compressed a good deal of experience into the first twenty-eight -years of his life. After a short period in the army he had married -an heiress who within a year made him a widower and the owner of an -estate in Antigua. In 1790 he met at St. Kitts Maria Banks Woodley, -youngest daughter of the governor of the Leeward Islands, and after a -brief courtship married her when she still lacked two months of being -eighteen. Though Maria’s mother was a native of St. Kitts, the girl had -been born and educated in England and soon after their marriage the -young couple returned there. - -According to one interpretation of a letter from Francis Grose to Burns -in January, 1791, they must have proceeded at once to an autumn visit -at Friars Carse, where Grose was also a guest. Grose told Burns that -‘after the Scene between Mrs. Riddell Jun^r and your humble Servant, -to which you was witness, it is impossible I can ever come under -her Roof again.’ The letter also refers to the Governor--‘a spoilt -Child with a Number of good Qualities’--whom its editor identifies as -Walter Riddell, Mrs. Riddell Junior being Maria. But there was also an -extremely senior Mrs. Riddell at Friars Carse, for Robert’s grandmother -lived with him. Hence the Junior may equally well have been Mrs. Robert -Riddell, and inasmuch as Maria had no roof of her own in Scotland until -1792, it is hard to see how any misconduct of hers could have shut -Friars Carse to Grose. - -If this was really Maria’s first meeting with Burns it was an -inauspicious start. But the early stages of the friendship are obscure. -The extant correspondence does not begin until February, 1792, and by -that time Maria’s life was so truly invaluable to Burns that to lose -her would leave a vacuum in his enjoyments that nothing could fill up. -By this time, too, she was the mother of a daughter, born in England -in August, 1791. Her husband was again in Dumfries, negotiating for -an estate, and Maria had gone to Edinburgh with the double purpose of -seeking expert medical advice and finding a printer for her narrative -of her voyage to the West Indies. To this latter end Burns introduced -her to his old friend Smellie in a letter which paid the highest -compliments to her intellectual and literary accomplishments--if -it can be called a high compliment to say that her verses ‘always -correct, and often elegant’, were ‘very much beyond the common run of -Lady Poetesses of the day’. The introduction resulted in a friendship -between Smellie and Maria of which the written records, being more -decorous than Burns’s own letters to the printer, were published by the -latter’s biographer. Maria liked to collect curios, and her interest -in Smellie might perhaps be thus explained. But the gruff and erudite -printer’s continued interest in Maria is further evidence that she had -brains as well as charm, though her letters are evidence enough. - -In the spring of 1792 Walter Riddell purchased the estate of Goldielea -near Dumfries, renamed it Woodley Park in Maria’s honour, and set up -as a country gentleman. More accurately, he paid a small deposit on -the purchase price without knowing how he would raise the main sum. -Burns visited frequently at Woodley Park, though its master bored -him. Walter Riddell apparently shared his brother’s convivial habits -without his brother’s modicum of literary and intellectual interests, -and the poet’s attitude towards him is more clearly shown by the almost -total absence of Walter’s name from his letters to Walter’s wife than -even by the crude epitaph which described the man as empty-headed and -poisonous-hearted. - -In letter-writing at least the friendship with Maria reached perihelion -in the autumn of 1793. Walter was then in the West Indies, trying to -raise money on his estate there, and Maria was living alone at Woodley -Park with her books, her music, and two baby daughters. By this time -Burns was ponderously flirtatious. Maria was the first and fairest -of critics, the most amiable and most accomplished of her sex, and -it was the final proof of his unhappy lot that when he was in love -‘Impossibility presents an impervious barrier to the proudest daring -of Presumption, & poor I dare much sooner peep into the focus of Hell, -than meet the eye of the goddess of my soul!’ At least one impassioned -lyric which originally began ‘The last time I cam o’er the moor And -passed Maria’s dwelling’ had been composed and submitted to the lady’s -criticism accompanied by a postscript which transparently disclaimed -personal application. In Walter’s absence, many of their meetings -during this autumn were at the homes of mutual friends or at the little -receptions which Maria held between the acts in her box at the theatre. -These latter, however, were sometimes subject to interruptions. On -at least one occasion Burns found an army officer--‘a lobster-coated -puppy’--already in possession, and withdrew without even announcing -himself. Maria chided him for his failure to appear and invited him -formally to share her box at the next performance; he kept her supplied -with all his latest lyrics, including those addressed to Clarinda. - -It would be a mistake to take Burns’s impassioned avowals too -seriously. Maria was a young and fascinating woman of the type which -pleases men better than it does members of her own sex, and Burns -thoroughly enjoyed her conversation. To the pleasures of intellectual -intercourse her company added a subdued erotic stimulation which he -expressed in the only language he knew. The very frankness of his -remarks and Maria’s calm acceptance of them is proof that they were -neither meant nor taken literally. - -And then came the breach seemingly inevitable in Burns’s relations with -every woman of higher station. Its details are still obscure. Even its -exact date cannot be determined, though it must have been in Christmas -week of 1793. The traditional story is that Burns was dining at Woodley -Park and that the men’s talk over their wine somehow got round to the -Rape of the Sabines. It was drunkenly agreed that on returning to the -drawing-room the men should stage a burlesque of the episode. They did, -and Burns, singling out his hostess as his prey, put too much ardour -into the game. Mrs. Carswell interprets the thing as a deliberate rag -on the part of the other men to get Burns to make a fool of himself. -Such at any rate was the result. After a stormy scene during which some -of the other ladies present tried to intercede for the poet he was -ignominiously expelled. The next day he grovelled in contrition before -the offended lady in the painfully humiliating ‘letter from Hell’. She -refused to be placated and after two more abortive efforts on Burns’s -part the breach between them was complete. - -This accepted story leaves unexplained several important details. -Foremost among them is the fact that in his apology Burns blames his -host for constraining him to drink more than he wished to. Maria -had told Smellie in November that Walter Riddell was in the West -Indies and was not expected back until spring. On January 12th, when -the breach with Burns had already occurred, she again mentioned her -husband’s absence. If these letters were correctly printed by Smellie’s -biographer, Walter Riddell could not have been the host; therefore -the scene could not have occurred at Woodley Park. The alternative -explanation is that it really happened at Friars Carse, with Robert and -Elizabeth Riddell in the roles usually assigned to Walter and Maria. In -this case Maria, hearing of Burns’s conduct, must have undertaken to -discipline him. - -Whatever the circumstances, Burns’s subsequent conduct was inexcusable. -During the early spring of 1794 he wrote several epigrams on Maria -which are utterly caddish, lacking alike in wit and decent feeling. One -of them he even offered to a London newspaper, the editor of which had -sense enough to reject it. He also wrote the long, dull, and vulgar -parody of Pope which bears the title ‘Esopus to Maria’ and which -attacks everything about Mrs. Riddell from her hair to her morals. -This last was meant for the ‘quite private’ delectation of John Syme -and one or two other intimates, but even if Burns had published it his -conduct could not have appeared in much worse light. The epigrams and -the ‘Monody on a Lady Famed for Her Caprice’ are enough in themselves -to put it beyond condoning. - -While Burns was thus exhibiting the worst side of his nature, his -victims’ circumstances were changing. Walter Riddell had returned from -the Indies without the money he had gone to raise, and in the course -of the spring Woodley Park was repossessed by its former owner, Walter -forfeiting his £1000 deposit on the purchase price as well as all that -he had laid out in improvements. On April 21st Robert Riddell died, -and Friars Carse was put on the market, the relations between the -two families being so uncordial that Elizabeth Riddell refused any -settlement which would leave her brother-in-law in possession of the -estate. Walter and Maria attempted the usual expedient of impoverished -gentry--a prolonged stay on the Continent--but found their way barred -by the armies of the French Revolution. Accordingly after a few -months in England they returned to the neighbourhood of Dumfries to -resume life on a much reduced scale. They settled at Tinwald House, a -tumble-down estate near Lochmaben, or rather Maria settled, for her -husband was absent most of the time. In May, 1795, they moved again, -this time to Halleaths, between Lochmaben and Lockerbie, where they -remained until they left Scotland forever in 1797. How much Maria had -heard of Burns’s conduct towards her no one but herself knew, and she -never told. When Currie published some of the letters referring to the -quarrel she affected complete ignorance of their relation to herself, -though it is hard to believe that some kind friend had not shown them -to her. - -If Burns showed the worst side of his nature in the quarrel, Maria -showed the best of hers in the reconciliation. Early in 1795 she made -the first move by sending him a book she had heard he wished to read. -He replied in a formal note in the third person which nevertheless -welcomed the overture and opened the way for further intercourse. By -the beginning of May he was writing in his old vein of flirtatious -gaiety and even confiding to Maria about the mysterious Reid miniature -of himself--mysterious because no one knows for whom he had it painted, -nor why. The woman who quarrelled with Burns in 1794 may have been -capricious, and have pushed her rigour further than was wise in dealing -with a man of Burns’s temperament. After all, twenty-one is not -infallible even when feminine and married. But the woman who reinstated -Burns in her good graces in 1795, after his caddish attacks upon her, -was certainly not petty. - -The renewed friendship had not long to live. Shadows of another sort -soon began to fall across it, for Burns’s health was breaking. A note -written at the end of May to accompany the loan of the Reid miniature -mentioned that he was so ill as scarcely to be able to hold pen to -paper; a month later he feared that his health was gone forever. The -autumn brought further affliction in the death of his little daughter, -and it was to Maria that he uttered the only existing record of his -grief: ‘That you, my friend, may never experience such a loss as mine, -sincerely prays R B.’ - -And so, through bereavement, illness, and despair, the passionate, -irritable poet and the vivacious young woman of the world drew towards -their last meeting. The bleak little watering-place, the Brow Well -on the Solway, was the scene. Maria’s health also was bad, and she -evidently, like Burns, lacked the funds to take her to a better resort. -On the 5th of July, 1796, she sent her carriage for Burns: not until -she saw him did she realize how serious his condition was. - -He was dying, and knew it. His overdriven heart, which had never wholly -recovered from the strain of doing a man’s work on insufficient food -at the age of fourteen, was giving out, and he was hastening his end -according to the best medical advice in Dumfries. A doctor who thought -that angina was ‘flying gout’ had ordered sea bathing, and the dying -poet was plunging himself daily in the chilly waters of the Solway, as -he had earlier in life sought to cure fainting-fits in a tub of cold -water at his bedside. Maria was startled by the visible stamp of death -on the features of the emaciated man who tottered from her carriage, -and her concern was increased by his almost total inability to eat. But -the presence of a young and attractive woman could still, as always, -rouse Burns to his best efforts, and his talk might even have been -gay--after his preliminary, ‘Well, Madam, have you any messages for the -other world?’--had Maria been able to forget his haggard countenance -long enough to reply in kind. - -As it was, they had ‘a long and serious conversation about his -present situation, and the approaching termination of all his earthly -prospects.’ The man who had never lied about himself, to himself or -others, now frankly faced the fact that he was dying. And the presence -of a sympathetic and intelligent listener urged him on to speech about -the matters nearest his heart. Two things perturbed him on the brink -of the grave--anxiety for his family, and anxiety for his fame. His -eldest son was not yet ten; there were three younger, and Jean was -hourly expecting a fifth; at least two others needed a father’s help to -lighten the stigma of illegitimacy. And as for his literary reputation-- - - ‘He said he was well aware that his death would occasion some noise, - and that every scrap of his writing would be revived against him to - the injury of his future reputation: that letters and verses written - with unguarded and improper freedom, and which he earnestly wished - to have buried in oblivion, would be handed about by idle vanity - or malevolence when no dread of his resentment would restrain them - or prevent the censures of shrill-tongued malice or the insidious - sarcasms of envy from pouring forth all their venom to blast his - fame.’ - -Could Burns have looked into the future, the prospect would have -deepened the pain in his harassed soul. His anxiety for his family -would have been allayed, to be sure, but not even in his darkest hour -could he have visualized the future of his personal and literary -fame. He foresaw attacks of his enemies; he did not foresee the -cowardice or treachery of his friends. He need not have worried about -his trivial or unguarded writings, for time automatically washes away -the sand and leaves the gold, if gold there be, and the publication -of trifling letters cannot harm their writer if the pattern of his -soul itself is not trifling. That spiritual descendants of Holy Willie -should deplore his best and strongest work and shake their heads over -passions of which their impotent pulses were incapable, that enemies -eager for revenge and underlings eager for drink should lie about their -relations with him--these things were to be expected. But that Bob -Ainslie, turned pious, should exemplify his own piety by preserving and -circulating Burns’s worst letters, that George Thomson should not only -ignore his dying wishes but even, before his corpse was in the grave, -rush into print with a distorted and melodramatic version of his last -years which would set the tone of biographies for a century to come, -that Gilbert should lack the courage to deny stories which he knew to -be false--all this, and much more, was mercifully hidden from him. But -it would have warmed his heart to know that the one intimate friend who -would come before the world with a truthful account of his character, -extenuating nothing, and setting nothing down in malice, was Maria -Riddell, on whom he had made unforgivable attacks, and who nevertheless -had forgiven him. The woman with whom the dying poet talked that day -until the distant bulk of Criffel turned dark against the sunset, and -the chill tide in which he had been ordered to bathe ebbed away from -the dismal flats of the Solway, was to prove herself the most devoted -friend of her sex he had ever had, Jean Armour always excepted. - - - - -V - -LIVELIHOOD - - -To Burns in the vigour of his early manhood the question of livelihood -seemed easily answered. He was a good enough ploughman to be assured -of the porridge and the few shillings a week which a skilled labourer -could earn on a Scottish farm. There was no degradation in such -service. The labourers, like the hired help on New England farms, ate -with the family and took whatever share in the conversation they were -capable of. Moreover, anyone, whatever his rank, who was capable of ‘a -sensible crack’ was sure of welcome in households which had either to -provide their own entertainment or go without. Not even the prospect of -dependent old age held any terrors. The tradition of the blue-gowns, or -licensed beggars, still persisted in rural Scotland. An old man past -work who could talk interestingly could count on a meal and a place -by the fire at almost any farmer’s ingle. Burns seriously thought of -this as a possible end of his own life. The expression of the idea in -several poems might be dismissed as rhetoric had he not repeated it -in the sober prose of his letters. He actually pictured himself as -spending his manhood in labour, love-making, and poetry and his old age -as a sort of Edie Ochiltree. - -Such a vision of course was adolescent. To fulfil it a man must have -no dependents. Burns seems to have imagined at first that if he could -help to keep the home together until his brothers and sisters were able -to establish themselves his responsibilities would end. The liberation -of his poetic talent entailed among other things a shrinking from the -burdens of marriage on narrow means. His rejected proposal to Alison -Begbie had come before his realization of his poetic calling; his -rejected offer to Jean Armour in 1786 was the result of sympathy for -her condition and not of a desire to settle down. But he soon learned -that he could not so simply escape responsibility. His children must be -provided for somehow even if he did not marry their mothers. Despite -the casualness with which he incurred paternity his parental feelings -were strong. ‘_Vive l’amour et vive la bagatelle_’ sounded well as -a motto until it was confronted by the actual problem of helpless -lives which owed their existence to him. As a Man of Feeling he could -not, even had he wished to, turn his back on them with Don Juan-like -callousness. Besides, the law might have something to say in the -matter--as Burns learned in the course of four suits or threatened -suits by four different women within two years. Unless he chose to flee -the country and repudiate his obligations he had to provide himself -with settled livelihood. - -For a man of his rank and education the possible choices open in -1786 were limited. He could continue as a farmer; he could attempt -to support himself by writing, or he could seek a salaried position -at home or in the colonies. Each alternative had its drawbacks. By -the beginning of 1786 his reputation in the community was such that -he could scarcely continue the partnership at Mossgiel, but he lacked -the capital necessary for setting up independently elsewhere. The hope -of any large financial returns from his poetry seemed too fantastic -for consideration; he lacked the training for journalism or hackwork -when Grub Street was crowded with penniless university men. There -remained the chance of some salaried position. Yet even if he had been -temperamentally fitted for a commercial job he was by this time too -old. Merchants’ clerks began their apprenticeship as boys in their -teens. Burns was twenty-seven. A post in the Excise Service might be -feasible but was not easy to get. All government jobs went by favour, -and despite the unpopularity of the service among the people at large -the number of aspirants so far exceeded the available places that -the endorsement of some influential person was almost essential. The -same thing was true of India, where the East India Company’s monopoly -gave patronage as large a part as it had in the government services. -The United States, not yet united, were in economic chaos; Canada was -undeveloped. There remained the West Indies, then at the height of -a prosperity built on slave labour, where independent planters with -Scottish connexions were numerous enough to make it possible for a -Scotsman with the necessary introductions to secure some sort of work. -The story of Burns’s struggle for livelihood is the story of his -efforts in each of the four possibilities open to him. - -The West Indian venture was the only one which never came to actual -trial. The documents are lost which would settle the date at which -Burns began seriously to consider emigration, but his mind was made -up at the very beginning of 1786. Through friends in Ayrshire he -obtained the offer of a position at thirty pounds a year as clerk and -overseer on a Jamaica plantation. The story is still repeated that he -published the Kilmarnock _Poems_ to pay his passage-money, but his own -contemporary account of the matter is sufficient refutation. He had -already arranged to go to Jamaica, his employer to pay his fare and -deduct the sum from his first year’s salary, before he decided to print -the poems. For Burns emigration was not only flight but almost a death -sentence. He had some justification for his feeling. The West Indian -climate helped to insure the financial success of a small minority of -white immigrants by killing off most of their rivals. He published his -poems because he wished, before saying farewell forever to Scotland, -to leave behind some tangible memorial. When the publication proved so -unexpectedly successful it immediately cancelled his flight. - -Burns’s first extant reference to Jamaica is in a letter to John -Arnot of Dalquhatswood, which was written in April, 1786, when the -subscription for the _Poems_ was well under way. Negotiations were then -almost complete: by June 12th Burns was able to announce that the -ship was on her way home that was to take him out; on August 14th he -explained that he was entering the employ of Charles Douglas of Port -Antonio and all that remained to settle was the route by which he was -to travel. In view of the time required for exchange of letters between -Scotland and the West Indies it is certain that the correspondence with -Douglas must have begun in the winter, before the Kilmarnock volume was -planned and while a considerable part of it was still unwritten. As the -troubles with the Armours thickened during the summer so did Burns’s -references to his impending emigration. During July and the first part -of August he was announcing that he had booked passage from Greenock -to Savannah-la-Mar in the _Nancy_, sailing about September 1. Then -returned Jamaicans advised him that the route was too roundabout, and -when the captain of the _Nancy_ notified him that the ship was about to -sail, Burns decided that the notice was too abrupt. The _Nancy_ sailed -without him, and he transferred his booking to the _Bell_, which was to -sail direct to Port Antonio at the end of September. - -The truth was that he was already wavering. The enthusiastic reception -of his poems, the interest which influential gentlemen began to take in -his welfare, were changing his opinion of himself and his prospects in -Scotland. Moreover, the Armours were calming down; friends had promised -to help him should Jean’s father renew the effort to execute his -warrant. Nevertheless he did not immediately abandon the Jamaica plan. -Though the _Bell_ in her turn sailed without him, he still watched the -shipping news as he collected his subscriptions and set his affairs -in order. Jean’s twins, born on September 3rd, increased the need for -settled livelihood, but increased also his reluctance to leave Scotland. - -Most of his letters of the autumn of 1786 have perished. As late -as October he was still talking of emigration, though he had again -postponed it after actually packing his trunk and starting for Greenock -at the end of September. He still feared, he told Robert Aiken, that -‘the consequences of his follies’ might banish him; in other words, -Betty Paton was threatening to sue him. The Armour affair had already -been compromised by dividing the responsibility for the care of the -twins between the two families. When the extant correspondence resumes -a month later, Jamaica had been discarded. By November 1st the poet had -decided to try his luck in Edinburgh. For this reversal the Kilmarnock -volume was directly responsible. - -When Burns had begun in April to solicit subscriptions for a volume -of his poems he had had no idea of making it a commercial success. -The book was intended as a memento of himself--a souvenir for his -friends and a final and unanswerable fling at his enemies. He probably -hoped for no more material return than would cover the expenses of -publication. Its success therefore was all the more intoxicating. -Six hundred and twelve copies were printed, of which about half were -subscribed for in advance, thanks mainly to Robert Aiken. When the -book came out at the beginning of August it furnished the first -literary sensation Ayrshire had ever known. The subscribers’ copies -were passed from reader to reader, creating such a demand that the -entire edition was sold within three months. When Mrs. Dunlop ordered -six copies in mid-November only five were left. At the end of July -Burns had been a fugitive with a warrant out against him, to escape -which he was shifting from one friend’s house to another. Two weeks -later he was a celebrity. His journeys through the country as he -collected his subscriptions became a sort of royal progress. The fact -that he was making a profit out of the book meant far less to him than -the applause of all sorts and conditions of men. People of influence -assured him that something could be done for him at home, though they -were vague as to precisely what. After the printer’s bills were paid -the volume showed a profit of more than £50, though forfeited deposits -on passage money and a substantial payment to Betty Paton reduced his -net gain to about twenty. But Burns still had no wish to write poetry -for money. He considered that ‘downright Sodomy of Soul’. Poetry was -his calling, but he refused to think of it as his livelihood. - -Another man for other reasons doubted the commercial prospects of -poetry. In spite of the handsome balance-sheet of the first edition, -John Wilson, the Kilmarnock printer, declined to undertake a second -without advance payment for all labour and materials. He felt that -the first had glutted the market. His timidity helped to transform -Burns from a local celebrity into a national figure. When friends in -Mauchline and Ayr suggested republishing the poems in Edinburgh Burns -thought it an attractive but impractical dream. But when copies of -the book reached people of influence in the capital and they repeated -the suggestion it wore a different look. By October the hope of a -favourable reception in the city had come to Burns from at least three -different sources. His friend, the Rev. George Lawrie of Loudoun, had -sent a copy of the book to Thomas Blacklock, the blind poet; Blacklock -had commended it warmly and had even promised--not so warmly--to bring -it to the attention of Hugh Blair. The famous professor of rhetoric, -Blacklock thought, was too refined in his taste to relish it. Another -eminent professor was not so finicky. Dugald Stewart, whose country -home was at Catrine a few miles from Mauchline, read and enjoyed the -poems, invited the poet to dinner, and added his personal encouragement -to the Edinburgh venture. Finally the book reached even the peerage. - -On November 1st Alexander Dalziel, steward of the Earl of Glencairn’s -estates, wrote that he had showed the poems to the Earl and that the -Earl had expressed his pleasure in them and his desire to befriend -their author. This approbation was heartening as Blacklock’s and -even Dugald Stewart’s could not be. The Earl had a reputation for -generosity and for keeping his word; he was one of the most popular -and influential peers in Scotland and his endorsement would have -weight with the people of wealth and fashion on whom the success of a -subscription would have to depend. But the Earl had nothing to do with -the abandonment of Jamaica. The same letter which brought the news of -the Earl’s interest also brought Dalziel’s congratulations on Burns’s -giving up his plans for leaving the country. What Glencairn really did -was to confirm the poet in his determination to offer his poems to a -larger audience. - -Undoubtedly Burns realized before he went to Edinburgh that he was -setting out on the old and painful quest of patronage--a quest which -had broken the hearts of more poets than it had ever freed from -penury. But it was still fame more than money that he looked for from -his poems. He continued to hope for some means of modest livelihood -independent of his writing; if his subscription brought a little -capital to help him on his way, so much the better. When he reached -Edinburgh he made no effort to appear more than he was; he even sought -deliberately to appear less. He dressed as a plain young farmer, and -finding that the metropolitan critics were praising his work as that -of an unlettered ploughman who wrote from pure inspiration he did his -best to act the part. When Robert Anderson pointed out in private -conversation some evidence of extensive knowledge of other poets Burns -readily admitted his indebtedness, but in public he would not permit -his claims to pure inspiration to be challenged. If an unlettered bard -was what his patrons wanted he would do his best to be one. Many -times, however, his role was trying, especially when stupider people -than himself condescended, and gave him good advice. - -Undoubtedly there were matters in which he needed good advice, but he -did not get it even from the patrons who did not condescend. Among -all his new friends there was no one to take his part as Sir Walter -Scott later took Southey’s in seeing that he got a fair contract with -his publisher. Glencairn had been as good as his word in securing -fashionable subscriptions. The Countess of Eglinton made the Earl -subscribe ten guineas; the entire membership of the aristocratic -Caledonian Hunt put down their names, but altered the first proposal -that they give two guineas each to a mere subscription at the regular -price. But Glencairn knew nothing about the business end of publishing. -In introducing Burns to William Creech, his brother’s former tutor and -the best-known publisher in the city, Glencairn no doubt felt that -he had done his best. He had, up to that point, but at that point a -good contract lawyer was needed. Unfortunately Henry Mackenzie and the -other men of letters in the city still adhered to the convention of the -writing gentleman who was supposed to disdain pecuniary rewards. A few -years earlier, when David Hume was alive, Burns might have been secured -better terms; a few years later under the leadership of Scott he would -certainly have secured them. Burns’s perverse pride would not allow him -to haggle over a contract which in any case offered more ready money -than he had handled in all his previous life. What he needed and did -not have was a hard-boiled business friend to do his haggling for him. - -As it was, Creech made an agreement which left Burns to bear all the -immediate risks and perhaps to receive a modest immediate profit, but -which reserved the long-term earnings for the publisher alone. As was -often the case with books published by subscription, the man whose -name appeared on the title-page was not the publisher in the modern -sense, but merely the author’s agent. He provided the facilities for -collecting the subscriptions and distributing the books, but took none -of the financial responsibility. The author received the entire payment -for the subscribers’ copies, but out of these receipts had to pay the -printer, the bookbinder, and also, presumably, the transportation -charges on copies delivered out-of-town. Furthermore, the agents who -distributed the books naturally expected to be paid. Hence Burns, -wherever possible, enlisted his friends for this service--Alexander -Pattison at Paisley, for instance, and Robert Muir at Kilmarnock--and -when that was not feasible still sought to avoid the regular -booksellers because they took ‘no less than the unconscionable, Jewish -tax of 25 p^r Cent. by way of agency’. - -The price to subscribers was set at the modest sum of five shillings, -and close to three thousand subscriptions were obtained. Burns objected -to printing the names of the subscribers--quite naturally, for the -thirty-eight pages meant money out of his pocket merely to gratify the -vanity of people yearning to see their names in print as patrons of -literature--but was overborne by some friends whom he did not ‘chuse -to thwart’. Professor Snyder calculates Burns’s utmost possible gross -receipts from the subscription at £750. But after all charges were paid -the net profit cannot have been more than half that sum. He told Mrs. -Dunlop that he cleared about £540, but there, as in a similar statement -to John Moore, he was reckoning in Creech’s payment of 100 guineas for -the copyright. - -That was the sum agreed on when, just as his book was ready for -delivery, Burns decided, ‘by advice of friends’ to dispose of his -copyright. Once more he had sought the advice of others, and once -more they told him the wrong thing. In this instance, the person -most at fault was Henry Mackenzie, to whom Burns and Creech referred -the question. Mackenzie was a lawyer, and ought to have warned Burns -against the absolute sale of his rights in a potentially valuable -piece of property. Instead Mackenzie contented himself with naming -one hundred guineas as his idea of a fair price. That was on April -17. Creech delayed his acceptance until the 23rd, on the pretence of -waiting to hear if Cadell and Davies would buy a share for their London -trade, but finally consented to ‘take the whole matter upon himself, -that Mr. Burns might be at no uncertainty in the matter.’ Thereupon -Creech left town, without either paying the money or giving his note -for it. A few days later Burns himself started on his Border tour, -still without any legal contract with Creech, but with his hands full -for the time being with the task of arranging deliveries, collecting -subscriptions, and paying the printer and the binder. Had not Peter -Hill, then Creech’s chief clerk, taken a good part of the burden on -himself, Burns would have been swamped under the worry of larger -transactions than he had known in all his life before. - -In August Burns returned to Edinburgh, but Creech was either again -absent or again coy. Not until October 23 did the publisher at last -set his hand to a note promising to pay the sum ‘on demand’. How soon -Burns began to ask for payment is uncertain, but by January Creech -had delayed and evaded so often that Burns ‘broke measures with -[him], and ... wrote him a frosty keen letter. He replied in forms of -chastisement’, promised payment on a set date--and broke his promise. -To add to the poet’s anxiety, rumours were afloat. It was hinted -that Creech was on the verge of bankruptcy; it was also hinted that -he had cheated Burns by secretly printing additional copies of the -_Poems_, which he sold for his own profit. Burns bewailed his own fate -as a ‘poor, d-mned, incautious, duped, unfortunate fool’; two months -later ‘that arch-rascal Creech’ was still making promises, and still -reneguing. Not until May 30, more than seven months after he had agreed -to pay ‘on demand’, did Creech at last part with his hundred guineas. -And even then Burns’s troubles were not over. Still another visit to -Edinburgh, at the end of February, 1789, was necessary before Creech -paid over the final sums due the poet for subscription copies, so that -at last he could report to Jean: ‘I have settled matters greatly to -my satisfaction with Mr. Creech.--He is certainly not what he should -be nor has he given me what I should have, but I am better than I -expected.’ - -The estimate of Creech was temperate enough; indeed, it erred, like -Burns’s statement to John Moore that Creech had ‘been amicable -and fair’ with him, on the side of charity. It is easy to condone -Mackenzie’s blunder and Creech’s sharp bargain on the ground that -neither of them could guess the future value of the copyright, but it -is impossible to excuse Creech’s postponements of the day of reckoning. -Prompt settlement of accounts after the book was published would have -sent Burns back to the country with his pockets comfortably lined and -with some of the glowing enthusiasm of his first season in Edinburgh -still undimmed. By his paltry delays Creech kept the poet in the city -until the interest of his fashionable ‘patrons’ had waned, until all -the pleasure of publication and fame had evaporated in bitterness -and disgust, and until the mere necessities of living must have made -considerable inroads on his irreplaceable capital. - -Indeed one of the extraordinary facts about Burns’s life in Edinburgh -is that he emerged from it without greater depletion of his capital. -Contemporary report calls him dissipated. Yet somehow Burns managed -to spend nearly a year and a half either in residence in Edinburgh or -in journeying to and fro, and still came out with about four hundred -and fifty pounds. So far as is known he had no income from July, 1786, -when he assigned his rights in Mossgiel to Gilbert, until he reaped -his harvest, such as it was, at Ellisland in the autumn of 1788. Even -then he netted little, for the outgoing tenant exacted a price of £72 -for the standing crops. However great his experience in the distracting -‘task of the superlatively Damn’d--making one guinea do the business of -three’--his twenty pounds from the Kilmarnock volume cannot have lasted -long, and if there were any gifts except the Earl of Eglinton’s ten -guineas and the same sum from Patrick Miller he nowhere mentions them. -If Burns dissipated heavily he managed somehow to do it without heavy -expenditure, an art few people have ever learned. - -The possibility that he received funds from Gilbert even after the deed -of assignment must be ruled out. The flow of funds in fact was the -other way. The supposedly careful and efficient Gilbert was in constant -difficulties at Mossgiel. Robert sent him ten pounds from Edinburgh -in the spring of 1787; during the following winter he authorized John -Ballantine to pay over to Gilbert about thirty pounds of subscription -money then in Ballantine’s hands. And this was only the beginning. The -letter to Gavin Hamilton already quoted indicates that Gilbert was so -far in arrears with his rent in March, 1788, that Hamilton wanted Burns -to sign some sort of a note for him. This Burns refused to do, because -he had already lent Gilbert £200--nearly half his receipts from the -Edinburgh edition. Whether the previous payments were counted as part -of this loan or not is uncertain; probably they were not, for after -the poet’s death John Syme declared that Gilbert owed £300, though the -legal accounting sets the figure at £200. It seems likely therefore -that Gilbert regarded the earlier payments as gifts, and that the sum -which Gilbert at last repaid to his brother’s family represented the -final loan in 1788. As part of the interest on the loan Burns arranged -that Gilbert should pay his mother an annuity of £5 a year and should -continue to care for Betty Paton’s daughter. The result was that -Gilbert made no cash payment during Burns’s life, and never was able -to pay off the principal until he undertook to re-edit the _Poems_ in -1820. Burns had given most substantial proof of his loyalty to his -family and in doing so had destroyed his only hope of success in his -own venture at Ellisland. - -Gilbert and his mother and sisters were not the whole of Burns’s -responsibilities. His younger brother William was approaching manhood -and turned naturally for support to the celebrity of the family. He -appears to have been an amiable but ineffective youth. He had served -at least part of an apprenticeship as a saddler, and in the autumn of -1787 Burns made some fruitless efforts to find him a job in Edinburgh. -A year or so later William set out to look for employment and held jobs -briefly in Longtown, in Newcastle, and finally in London, where he -died of typhus and where his funeral was arranged by John Murdoch and -paid for by Burns. Burns’s letters to this brother during his year of -wandering consist in about equal proportion of exhortations to brace -up and be a man and of enumerations of gifts--shoes and shirts and -waistcoats and above all money. Burns’s position as family capitalist -was no sinecure. - -While he was struggling with Creech and trying to keep Mossgiel afloat, -Burns was constantly harried by the problem of his own future. The only -two possibilities he could see were a farm of his own or a post in the -Excise, and for a long time there seemed little chance of achieving -either. He had no intention of trying again for public aid through his -writing. One subscription might be regarded as a public tribute; a -repetition would look like begging. Besides, his common sense told him -that a second subscription would have little hope of success unless it -came at a long interval after the first and for work of a different -character. He had not exhausted his talents, but he had exhausted his -novelty. For the rest of his life he steadfastly refused to accept -payment for anything he wrote and actually gave away poems which make -up two-thirds of the bulk of his collected works. His sole payment for -‘Tam o’ Shanter’ was a dozen copies of the proof-sheets; his payment -for Creech’s second edition in 1793--which included ‘Tam’ and a score -of other new poems--was twenty presentation copies grudgingly allowed -him. His fondness for making gestures of gallant but unwise generosity -can hardly be better illustrated than by his dealings with Creech over -this edition. The publisher wrote to him in 1791, proposing a reissue -of the work and asking Burns to contribute some new poems to it, but -without suggesting payment for them. Burns told Cunningham that he had -taken a damned revenge of Creech by ignoring his letter. Yet a few -months later he relented, and after reminding Creech that the new poems -were his own absolute property, turned them over to him without asking -any payment except the twenty gift copies. Such a gesture might have -shamed some publishers, but Creech merely accepted it as his right. In -the same spirit Burns hotly resented George Thomson’s payment of £5 for -his contributions to the first number of the _Select Scotish Airs_, -and Thomson, like Creech, felt no compunction at accepting the poet’s -quixotic generosity. - -On at least two occasions, moreover, Burns was offered pay for -journalistic writing in party newspapers. The origin, extent, and -duration of his relations with Peter Stuart of the London _Star_ are -all obscure, but it is plain that Stuart as a zealous Whig tried to -get Burns as a regular contributor. The poet refused. When he struck -off a satirical skit he was willing to give it to Stuart, but the -only pay he accepted was a free subscription to the paper. Thus he -managed to acquire the reputation, injurious to his hopes in government -employ, of being a partisan writer without any reward except notoriety. -Again in 1794 Patrick Miller, Jr., his landlord’s son who had been -put into Parliament at the age of twenty-one, persuaded James Perry -of the London _Chronicle_ to offer Burns what for those days was a -fair salary if he would come to London and devote his talents to the -press. Again Burns refused. He realized well enough that the prosperity -of a newspaper was often short-lived and he feared to jeopardize his -children’s future by exchanging an assured though meagre income for -the chances of the journalistic profession. Besides, the writer in a -partisan paper in 1794 was risking jail as well as economic insecurity, -as the sedition trials then in progress had proclaimed to all the -kingdom. - -But if he was not to support himself by writing how was he to support -himself? That question hammered in his mind from the time he abandoned -the Jamaica project until the early spring of 1788. Even before he went -to Edinburgh he had thought of the Excise. But he found his Edinburgh -patrons cold to all hints. These gentlemen reasoned simply. Burns -was the ploughman poet: ergo, he should continue to plough. The only -definite gesture made towards getting him government work was Mrs. -Dunlop’s. She offered an introduction to Adam Smith in the hope that -Smith might help him to a job in the customs, but the philosopher had -left for London the day before Burns presented his letter. Moreover -Smith no longer took an interest in much except his own health, and if -Burns sought later to renew his application nothing came of it. His -most favourable opportunity to cultivate the acquaintance of high -officials was lost when he allowed William Nicol to drag him away from -Blair Athole, where Robert Graham of Fintry, Commissioner of Excise, -was one of the guests, and where Henry Dundas was shortly to appear. - -Meanwhile an offer of another sort was being pressed upon him. He had -been in Edinburgh only a few weeks when the prosperous and enthusiastic -Patrick Miller sought his acquaintance. Miller, after a varied career, -at sea and as a banker, had retired from business with a comfortable -fortune and was devoting himself to miscellaneous experiments. He -was the sort of capitalist who is a godsend to struggling inventors, -for his enthusiastic imagination enabled him both to visualize the -inventor’s aims and to overlook all the practical details and delays -which intervene between a project and its fulfilment. His strongest -enthusiasm at the moment was the improvement of navigation, but his -interests also included agriculture. Not long before Burns came to -Edinburgh Miller had bought the run-down estate of Dalswinton near -Dumfries, and it was Ellisland, one of the farms on this estate, which -he urged upon Burns. - -The poet was afraid of it from the start, and for good reason. -Miller, he said, was no judge of land, and what Miller thought was an -advantageous offer might ruin his tenant. Had Burns been gifted with -second-sight he could not have prophesied more accurately. Yet the -difficulty he always found in saying ‘No’ to people whose intentions -were friendly combined with his own inclinations to keep him from -refusing Miller’s offer outright. Farming was the business he knew -best, and a farmer’s life he held was the best of lives--if one could -live by it--but Mount Oliphant, Lochlie, and Mossgiel had been a triple -lesson on the fate of the tenant who undertook a lease without capital -enough to stock a farm profitably. Even if the Dalswinton farm were all -that Miller thought it, Burns doubted if his literary profits would -suffice to give him a start. However, he agreed to look at Ellisland -when he reached Dumfries at the end of his Border tour. When he did -so he could scarcely have been in the mood for a really critical -examination. The savage hospitality he had experienced for the past -three weeks had left him jaded and depressed, and the annoyance of -being greeted at Dumfries by Meg Cameron’s letter would not sharpen his -critical faculties. Even so he could see at a glance that the soil was -exhausted and would require long and careful nursing. In fact the only -thing to be said for Miller’s offer was that, recognizing the run-down -condition of the property, he was offering it at a low rental for the -first three years. Fifty pounds per annum for a farm of more than a -hundred acres contrasted favourably with the prices in East Lothian, -where landlords were asking as much as thirty shillings an acre. Burns -went home to Mossgiel without having made up his mind; if discussion -with the cautious Gilbert contributed to any decision it was a negative -one. Ellisland was too big a risk. He returned to Edinburgh in the -fall with his mind made up. He would renew his efforts to secure an -Excise commission and would bank the profits of his poems as a reserve -fund for the education and security of his children. - -But Miller was not easily discouraged. He had evidently decided that -the poet as a tenant would be an asset to Dalswinton. Accordingly he -urged Burns to go down again and have a more critical look at the -place. A severe cold which confined him to the house enabled Burns -again to evade committing himself and not long afterwards came the -injury to his knee which laid him up for weeks and involved him in the -Clarinda affair. But meanwhile his endeavours for an Excise commission -were not prospering. Glencairn disapproved; Mrs. Dunlop disapproved; -apparently everyone who might have exerted the necessary influence -disapproved. In January Miss Nimmo sent him to a Mrs. Stewart who was -supposed to have influence with the commissioners. The interview was -not a success. Burns came away from it boiling with helpless rage. He -had been questioned like a child about his most private affairs and -Mrs. Stewart had further improved the occasion by rebuking him for -the Jacobite sentiments he had scratched on the window of the inn at -Stirling. If the quest for an Excise job was to expose him to this sort -of thing Burns was ready to throw up the whole project. - -Just when the matter appeared most hopeless his chance came from an -unexpected quarter. The surgeon who had treated his injured knee was -Alexander Wood, better known to his fellow-citizens as Lang Sandy -Wood, who after a wild youth had become one of the most respectable -characters, in both senses of that word, in Edinburgh. Wood learned of -his patient’s desire and offered to do what Glencairn and the others -had refused or evaded--to bring Burns’s case directly and personally -before the Board. The result was that before he left Edinburgh Burns -found himself, ‘without any mortifying solicitation’ on his own part, -equipped with the official order for the six-weeks’ course of special -instructions which would entitle him to an Excise commission. It came -none too soon. One of the rules of the service was that no man could -enter it who was in debt, who was more than thirty years old, or who -had more than three children. Burns’s time for meeting these two latter -qualifications was getting very short indeed. - -But now that he saw an open road into the Excise Burns’s mind veered -round. Farming after all was a more poetical occupation than ‘searching -auld wives’ barrels’. Miller was still urging Ellisland upon him, and -the possibility of failure there did not look so black when he knew -that if he did fail he had the Excise to turn to. He agreed to revisit -the farm. No doubt he told himself, as he told Clarinda, that he did -so only out of courtesy to Miller, knowing that the Excise must be -his lot. His judgement warned him that the farm would not do; his -emotions swayed him in its favour. In an effort to strengthen his -judgement he invited his old friend, John Tennant of Glenconner, to -join the tour of inspection. Glenconner’s mind would not be biased by -any poetic considerations. It did not occur to Burns that even the most -experienced of farmers, looking at soil different from that he was -accustomed to, could scarcely gauge its productivity rightly at the -end of February. The rule-of-thumb farming which Glenconner and most -of his contemporaries practised required the sight of growing crops -for correct judgement. Tennant looked the place over and told Burns it -was a bargain at Miller’s price. The opinion astonished the poet, but -he failed to realize that it was merely a guess less accurate than the -opinion he himself had formed on seeing the place the previous June. -Burns frequently made mistakes, but his worst ones were made when he -relied on other people’s judgement. In March he signed Miller’s lease -and committed himself to three years of struggle and discouragement -which swallowed all the capital which had not already been poured into -the bottomless morass of Mossgiel. - -Legend has it that Burns was offered his choice of two farms on the -Dalswinton estate and selected Ellisland because of its more attractive -location--‘a poet’s choice and not a farmer’s’. In fact Miller offered -no choice, and in drawing up the lease employed all the usual legal -technicalities with one or two additions of his own. The rent was to be -£50 a year for the first three years and £70 thereafter, and Miller’s -zeal for improvements was to have scope even while the tenant was in -possession. The landlord reserved the right to take over the riverbank, -a twenty-yard-wide belt along the Friars Carse boundary, and two -acres of other land at his own choice to plant with trees. He agreed, -however, to put money of his own into the place. It had not even a -farmhouse when Burns signed the lease, and Miller undertook to provide -adequate buildings. The contractor’s delay in constructing these caused -further needless anxiety and actual loss to Burns. - -After the die was cast all Burns’s earlier doubts about Ellisland and -his own ability to handle it returned with redoubled force. His first -move was to make sure of his Excise appointment by taking the necessary -six weeks of special instructions from the officer at Mauchline, even -though this delayed his settlement until mid-June. Inasmuch as these -six weeks included also the emotional stress of the ending of the -Clarinda romance and his acknowledgement of Jean as his wife, his -nerves were overwrought when he finally reached his farm. The prospect -there might have discouraged a more phlegmatic man. The farmhouse was -not even started, and his only shelter was a leaky and chimneyless -labourer’s hovel. The sparse growth of the crops planted by his -predecessor confirmed the exhaustion of the soil, and he was confronted -as never before with the need for executive skill. That aspect of his -nature which led him to remark that somehow he could make himself -pretty generally beloved yet never could get the art of commanding -respect told heavily against him when he had both to keep his own -labourers at work and to bully or cajole the contractor into finishing -the farmhouse at the time agreed upon. When he was not present the -farmhands lay down on the job; when he was present they found it -altogether too easy to engage him in talk while the work suffered. The -friendship he formed with Thomas Boyd, the contractor, led among other -things to an acquaintance with Thomas Telford, the great engineer, -but it did not lead to the speedy completion of his house. As late as -March, 1789, he was still pleading with Boyd to get at least the shell -of it finished. Moreover he was too sympathetic with his workmen. The -margin of profit on such a farm was too small to permit indulgence -in humanitarian sentiments, but Burns knew too much of the lives of -the lower classes to have the necessary hardness. Two letters to -the owner of the neighbouring farm with whom Burns had cooperated -in digging a drain do credit to his feelings if not to his business -capacity. The labourer who undertook the job at seventeen pence a rood -had underestimated the time. In order to give him a fair wage for his -labour Burns added three-pence a rood to the contract price for his -share and asked the neighbour to do the same--with what result is not -recorded. - -But there was a still deeper psychological hindrance to success at -Ellisland. Even had the soil been productive, even had he secured a -foreman who could have kept his hands at work, the Burns who undertook -Ellisland was not the Burns of Lochlie or even of Mossgiel. Though by -no means setting up as a gentleman farmer, he had become conscious of -having a position to maintain. Gilbert, he thought, might be able to -take over Ellisland and succeed with it; ‘as he can with propriety -do things that I _now_ cannot do.’ Physical debility was also to be -reckoned with, for he must have got out of training during almost two -years of exemption from regular labour, and his weakened heart would -prevent his easily recovering his lost tone. But in fact his mind was -filled with other matters and metres. That during his first summer -he spent alternate fortnights with Jean in Mauchline was a temporary -circumstance without relation to the success of the farm thereafter, -but that his work for Johnson’s _Museum_ was filling his mind was a -fact less easily discounted. In the middle of his first summer he had -a fiddler with him for at least two days playing over a collection of -Highland music in quest of lyric tunes for Johnson. It was a prelude to -his greatest period of lyric creativeness, but it was not an augury of -success in managing a poor farm on limited capital. - -The first season’s harvest offered little encouragement. Wet weather -and scanty labour made it difficult to salvage whatever thin crop the -fields had produced. Before his lease was six months old Burns was -confiding to his friends that he was uncertain of his farm’s doing -well, but, as he told Ainslie, he had his Excise commission in his -pocket and did not care three skips of a cur dog for the gambols of -Fortune. The chance of obtaining the commission had made him willing -to undertake the farm; possession added still another psychological -handicap to its successful conduct. Embittered youthful memories of the -humiliations of a tenant farmer had been reinforced by the development -of his poetic vocation to clog whole-hearted effort. Now the existence -of his commission held always open a door of escape from any threatened -renewal of the old humiliation and thereby unconsciously slowed still -further the endeavours which were his only safeguard. He was defeated -at Ellisland before he began. - -By the following spring he had begun to realize his defeat. The farm -and his family, including William, were swallowing the remains of his -capital so rapidly that it was doubtful if he could hold on without -more income than the farm was likely to yield. It occurred to him that -he might use his commission while he still held the farm. He had not -thought of this at first. The usual procedure for a beginner was to -be assigned to some district where a place was vacant, there to serve -several months’ apprenticeship without pay. When pay commenced, it had -until recently been at the rate of £35 a year, but about the time Burns -obtained his commission the initial stipend was raised to £50. Looking -about his own neighbourhood, Burns learned that the officer in charge -of the rural parishes to the north of Dumfries was a certain Leonard -Smith, who had recently inherited money and was not distinguishing -himself by activity in the service. Burns decided to play politics. - -His commission had been obtained through Robert Graham of Fintry, one -of the chief Commissioners for Scotland. Fintry had expressed personal -interest in the poet’s welfare in terms which must have soothed his -bristling pride, for Burns had already addressed to him both a prose -letter of thanks and a poetic epistle in imitation of Pope. Though -Fintry never quite supplanted Lord Glencairn in Burns’s esteem, he -in fact became the poet’s second patron and in the long run did more -for him than even the Earl had done. Graham’s first favour had been -the commission itself; his second was the appointment to active duty. -Before his first harvest was over Burns coolly suggested that Smith -might be relieved from duty without serious loss to himself and perhaps -with a gain to the Service. On his visit to Edinburgh in February, -1789, Burns pressed the matter further. Graham promised to do what he -could, but pointed out that it was clean against regulations to start -a new man at full pay without a probationary period. Nevertheless he -undertook to investigate Smith’s conduct and by midsummer had found -cause for removing him, had given Burns the place, and had circumvented -the rule against starting a new man at full duty and on full pay. For -one who had always boasted his independence and had spoken scornfully -of the political quest for favours, Burns had done a neat and -successful job of wire-pulling. - -Having once got his appointment, however, Burns had no intention of -treating it as a sinecure. His district covered twelve sparsely-settled -parishes and his tours of inspection required, to fulfil the letter of -the law, that he ride two hundred miles a week in all weathers and all -states of the uniformly bad roads. This meant that he could give little -of his time and less of his strength to Ellisland. To provide for the -farm he endeavoured to increase his dairy stock, which Jean could -supervise in the intervals of having babies and managing her household. -The cattle, too, might help in the slow task of rebuilding the worn-out -acres. - -But the strain of his new duties soon took physical toll. In the late -fall of 1789, after less than two months of service, ‘a malignant -squinancy and low fever’ laid him up for six weeks. His handwriting -indicates that the illness was really serious; the letters written -during convalescence are in a hand almost as weak and straggling -as that of June and July, 1796. Nevertheless he had proved his -qualifications for the job. An official report on various subordinate -officers in the Excise bears after Burns’s name the notation ‘a -poet--never tried--turns out well.’ He had moreover established -friendly relations with his immediate superiors, Alexander Findlater, -the Supervisor, and John Mitchell, the Collector, of the Dumfries -district. With the latter, indeed, he was already on terms approaching -intimacy, sending him gifts of new-laid eggs from Ellisland and -accompanying them at least once with a poetic epistle so broadly -humorous that no editor has ever printed it all. Both men testified to -Burns’s fidelity by defending his character after his death and--what -is far more significant--by reporting favourably on him during his life. - -He was giving reason for favourable reports. His predecessor had -been so slack that Burns was able to appear, at the first session of -court after he began duty, with an impressive array of cases of tax -evasion. In handling these he again displayed political astuteness. -The minor offenders, mostly poor men who could ill afford a fine, he -begged off with warnings or suspended sentences. This almost compelled -the magistrates to fine the larger offenders for whom he refused -to intercede, and inasmuch as Excise officers then, like American -customs inspectors today, received a percentage of these penalties, -Burns found his procedure remunerative in cash as well as in official -credit. He soon discovered, though, that zeal had its drawbacks. -Gentlemen of position, including some of the magistrates themselves, -had their favourite smugglers or home-brewers, and when Burns caught -one of these he started all the machinery of influence and political -pressure so familiar to Americans during the prohibition era. Once -he told Collector Mitchell, after a hard day’s riding in rounding up -witnesses in a case, that he expected for his pains to be clapped in -jail for annoying the friends of half the gentlemen in the county. -The grosser temptations of bribery, however, did not touch him. The -various legends, deriving from highly unreliable oral tradition, of -his leniency with small offenders mean no more, even if literally -true, than that Burns had learned the common sense of his profession. -A customs inspector knows that his job is not to penalize every -tourist who has failed to declare a dozen handkerchiefs but to catch -the large-scale smuggler. The same was true of the laws Burns had to -enforce, which imposed taxes on everything from whisky to candles. Not -but what he made ordinary human distinctions between his public and his -private capacities. William Lorimer, father of ‘Chloris’, was one of -the poet’s intimate friends. He was also a bootlegger whose ways were, -‘like the grace of G--, past all comprehension’. Seemingly Lorimer -maintained a moderate legal stock for inspection purposes, but once -when he was absent and his wife drunk something slipped in the working -of the gentlemen’s agreement, and Burns had to explain to Supervisor -Findlater. Another time he helped, as revenue officer, in a series of -raids on Dumfries haberdashers who had been selling smuggled French -gloves. A few days later, as private citizen, he supplied Maria Riddell -with similar gloves from a still unraided dealer’s stock. The problems -and conditions of law enforcement are among the few immutables in human -history. - -After two years’ experience Burns reaffirmed that the Excise was -after all the business for him. He added, ‘I find no difficulty in -being an honest man in it; the work of itself, is easy; and it is a -devilish different affair, managing money matters where I care not a -damn whether the money is paid or not; from the long faces made to a -haughty Laird or still more haughty Factor, when rents are demanded, -and money, alas, not to be had!’ His position as tenant farmer was no -longer an irritation; it was an obsession. Ellisland, he told Gilbert, -had undone his enjoyment of himself. He looked forward with the same -desperate hope as his father’s at Mount Oliphant to the ‘freedom in his -lease’. The three-year period of the £50 rental ended in 1791. After -that, if he chose to stay, Ellisland would cost £70 a year. Naturally, -his discouragement and defeat on the farm had affected his relations -with his landlord. Miller’s kindness, he said, had been just such -another thing as Creech’s, and the fact that Mrs. Miller had failed to -appreciate one of his poorer contributions to Johnson’s _Museum_ did -not heighten his esteem for the family. He wanted no more to do with -landlords or anything that belonged to them. - -His only good luck at Ellisland came at the end. The surrender of the -lease did not annoy Miller as Burns had expected, for a purchaser was -in the market, and Miller was glad enough to dispose of the farm which -the Nith separated from the rest of his estate. After sending Jean and -the children to Mauchline, Burns held an auction of his standing crops -and provided the lavish drinks expected by auction-goers. One result -was that the exhilarated bidders ran up the prices nearly a guinea an -acre beyond the market rates; another was that house and stable-yard -were strewn with helplessly drunk and retching neighbours. The sale -brought ready cash for the first time in two years, and Burns used -some of it to clear up a variety of small debts, including the four -pounds he owed his namesake, Robert Burn of Edinburgh, for erecting -Fergusson’s tombstone. He also celebrated his manumission by a brief -visit to Edinburgh to say farewell to Clarinda and to try to do -something for sick and penniless Jenny Clow. - -While things had been going so badly on the farm his position in -the Excise had been improving. After less than a year and a half in -his laborious rural division he had wangled a transfer to a vacant -‘footwalk’, the ‘3d, or Tobacco, Division’, in Dumfries. This meant -lighter work, and enabled him to dispense with his horse--not too soon, -for his poor worn-out mare had given him several nasty falls on the -bad roads, bruising him severely and once breaking his arm. In town, -though, he had small opportunity for increasing his income through -fines and penalties as he had done in the rural division. When at -the end of 1791 he moved his family into Dumfries the best quarters -he could afford were a crowded and uncomfortable half-of-a-house in -the Stinking Vennel, near the river. He was still receiving only the -minimum salary of £50 a year, and though Jean said long afterwards that -they did not come empty-handed into Dumfries not much cash can have -remained after he had discharged his debts. As early as March, 1790, -he had estimated that he would be lucky if he did not lose more than -£100 out of an investment of little more than £200. Such anticipatory -estimates are oftener under the mark than over it; one suspects that if -Burns recovered as much as £50 of the money he had put into Ellisland, -he was lucky. - -By comparison, his prospects in the Excise were roseate. The Port -Division in Dumfries, best paid of the subordinate posts, was vacant, -and Burns lobbied for it with William Corbet, general supervisor of -Excise, as he had done with Graham of Fintry for his first appointment. -Corbet was an old friend of Mrs. Dunlop’s, and her intercession was -effectively supplemented by a warm recommendation from Findlater, the -local supervisor. Burns got the job early in 1792. The salary was -£70 a year with various perquisites worth another £20. It scarcely -represented luxurious living, but it was a better income than most -Scottish schoolmasters or even ministers received in the eighteenth -century, and though ‘Robin’s temper was not cold and frugal’ he managed -to be fairly comfortable. After a year in the Stinking Vennel he moved -to a better house in what was then called Mill Street and is now Burns -Street--the last of his numerous abodes. - -Even before he left Ellisland Burns’s name had been placed on the list -of those eligible for promotion to the rank of Supervisor. This was the -most laborious of the Excise posts, for the supervisors did most of the -real work of collection and administration. They received salaries -of from £200 to £400 a year, but their duties filled most of their -waking hours. So long as he was merely Port Officer Burns had time and -energy for reading and song-writing. He knew, however, that when in the -course of seniority he became a supervisor most of this would cease. -But he was already looking beyond. The next rank above Supervisor was -Collector, and the collectors held well-paid sinecures. In theory -at least supervisors were appointed by merit, but collectorships -admittedly went by favour, and Burns began to cultivate political -friendships which might in the future secure him the necessary -influence. - -Not that he had any intention of soldiering on his job and trusting to -influence to lift him to a better one. He was taking an intelligent -interest in his work and sought the attention of his superiors by his -understanding of their business. Thus he had not been long in his Port -Division before he wrote to Provost Staig of Dumfries pointing out that -the town was losing revenue through failure to assess a tax on imported -ale, and backed his statement with an estimate of the sums involved -and some shrewd advice as to the best method of getting his chiefs to -enforce their collection. A year or so later he pointed out to Robert -Graham that one of the Dumfries divisions could be abolished and its -duties distributed among the other officers without overburdening them. -There cannot be many instances on record of a government employee’s -informing his superiors that he was underworked. On this occasion at -least Burns took an unusual way of drawing attention to himself. He was -also once more suggesting his own advancement at the expense of another -man, but admitted the fact and coupled his recommendation with a plea -that if the change were made the present incumbent, burdened with an -expensive family, be provided for elsewhere. - -He would have been the last to claim that these suggestions were -free of any ulterior motive beside the general one of making himself -known as a thoughtful and efficient officer. He had other and more -immediate purposes. Not long after showing Provost Staig the revenue -possibilities of the ‘twa pennies’ tax on ale he had a petition to -make to the Burgh Council. When he first visited Dumfries in 1787 -he had been made an honorary burgess; he now wanted that nominal -citizenship converted into a real one so far at least as concerned the -local schools. The sons of burgesses were entitled to free tuition at -Dumfries Academy, and the chance of getting his boys into a first-rate -school was not to be neglected. His petition set forth in detail -the help he had given to the local revenues. This may not have been -the reason why the Council at once granted his application, but it -certainly did not hamper it. Similarly his letters to Graham were -frankly motivated by a desire to get a post as acting supervisor at -the earliest possible moment and thereby to secure not only some small -immediate increase in income but the experience and reputation which -would count in his favour when a permanent position opened. - -These were reasonable and legitimate efforts to gain prestige. He -indulged in others more ticklish and, in the perspective of history, -more futile. Burns lacked the right temperament for cultivating -politicians, but he could not help trying. He was once introduced, for -instance, to that very shady character, the Duke of Queensberry, whom -previously he had rated with some justice as a complete scoundrel. -At their meeting the Duke proved affable, and hearing that Burns had -written a song about the notorious ‘Whistle’ drinking bout mentioned -that he would like a copy. Burns sent it to him with a flattering -letter, no doubt hoping that at some future date the Duke’s influence -might be useful. There was nothing particularly dangerous in this, -for the Duke’s rank made him a public character irrespective of what -party was in power. But when Burns undertook to meddle in parliamentary -contests he was playing with fire. He had of course no vote himself, -but he wrote ballads in support of Whig candidates and continued to -do so until a few months before his death. From the viewpoint of 1792 -something might have been said for this as good strategy, regardless of -the poet’s actual sympathies. Except for the brief Rockingham ministry -at the end of the American War the Tories had been in power for nearly -a generation and a reversal was overdue. When and if the Whigs came -in a man who had supported them in their time of adversity would be -entitled to special favours. Neither Burns nor anyone else in Britain -could foresee Napoleon and realize that Pitt’s ministry, which had -already been on the verge of disaster over the Regency Bill, would, -thanks to the Frenchman, remain in office until after Burns and most of -his parliamentary friends were in their graves. As things turned out, -silence would have been the better part for Burns, but he had no gift -for silence. - -In the same year moreover in which Burns secured his Port Division -the effects of the upheaval in France were stirring both Burns and -Scotland. The cries of Liberty and Equality and Fraternity were -echoed in the North and enlisted as in England a motley collection of -supporters who ranged from poetic idealists, like Burns and Wordsworth, -through professional agitators like Thomas Paine and Horne Tooke to -unprincipled rabble. Burns’s first public gesture of sympathy with the -French Revolution came as a by-product of the most exciting episode -in his career as an Excise officer. In the early spring of 1792 a -smuggling schooner named the _Rosamond_ was caught in the Solway. -The ship was heavily armed and thanks to the active co-operation of -the coastwise folks, who staved in all their rowboats to keep the -Excise officers from using them, she landed her cargo. The _Rosamond_, -however, remained aground on the tidal flats and when an armed force -of dragoons and Excise officers--Burns among them--waded out to attack -her the crew fled after scuttling the ship. Salvaged and towed into -the Nith the _Rosamond_ with all her gear was confiscated and sold at -auction. Her armament included four carronades which Burns bought for -£4 and dispatched as a gift to the French Convention. Such at least -is the traditional story, and every detail of it, except the actual -dispatch of the carronades, is corroborated by documents found among -the Abbotsford papers. The tradition continues that the guns never -reached France, being seized by the customs officials at Dover; but -here again confirmation is lacking. Legally there was nothing wrong -in Burns’s action. France and England were still officially at peace, -though their relations were steadily growing tenser. Nevertheless, -from the practical viewpoint of a government employee with a dependent -family it was a gesture of almost criminal recklessness. The government -has never yet existed which looked benevolently upon manifestations of -revolutionary sympathies among its servants, and before many months had -passed Burns had good reason to be frightened. - -The autumn of 1792 saw England ready to join the coalition against -revolutionary France, though war was not declared until February -1, 1793. To the privileged classes in England the war had all -the characteristics of a crusade except the obligation to take a -personal share. The Revolution threatened the very foundations of the -aristocratic social system, and the depth of the government’s fear is -measured by the violence alike of official denunciations of France and -of the suppression of dissenting opinion at home. Charges of sedition -were pressed not only against avowed revolutionary sympathizers but -against almost anyone who had advocated the slightest modification of -the existing order. It was not surprising that Burns, always unguarded -in speech and action, should face investigation of his conduct. The -details of the charges and their outcome belong in another chapter. For -a time Burns thought that all his hopes of advancement were blasted, -but the storm soon blew over, and even before he advertised his -loyalty by enlisting in the Dumfries Volunteers he had good reason to -anticipate that promotion would come in due course. - -But though he escaped the storm of persecution he did not escape the -economic consequences of the war. It had the usual and inevitable -results of tight money and rising prices; a wave of bankruptcies swept -over Scotland; the monthly lists of failures in the _Scots Magazine_ -increased from an average of half-a-dozen a month to forty-six in -July, 1793, and among the victims was Burns’s friend, Walter Auld -the saddler. The poet himself was not exempt. The war cut off the -greater part of the import trade and with it much of the income and -perquisites of Dumfries Port Division. Burns had just begun to extend -his expenditures in keeping with his increased income. The carronades -and his better house were only part of the expansion. He had backed -a friend’s note and had to pay it when the friend defaulted; he had -lent considerable sums to another friend, the schoolmaster at Moffat, -who was engaged in a long-drawn-out wrangle with the Earl of Hopetoun, -patron of the school; there were other smaller loans as well. Caught -thus with ready cash exhausted, income reduced, and prices rising, -Burns found himself once again in the grimly familiar position of -being unable to pay his landlord. That the landlord was a gentleman -and a personal friend who did not dun for his money made the situation -more painful. In January, 1795, Burns had actually to borrow three -guineas from his friend, William Stewart, in order to pay part of his -rent. Nevertheless even in these hard times he managed occasional -expenditures that came in the class of luxuries--a week’s tour in -Galloway with John Syme, the restoration of a Jacobite relic in form -of Lord Balmerino’s dirk, even a miniature portrait of himself. He and -his family never lacked for the necessaries of life, and though he was -somewhat in debt the accounting of his executors is proof that the -amount never passed reasonable bounds. - -As soon as the excitement over the sedition charges subsided his -prospects in the Excise brightened steadily. Friends in Edinburgh were -secretly trying to get him transferred to a more lucrative position, -but even in Dumfries things looked hopeful. At the end of December, -1794, Supervisor Findlater fell ill, and Burns took over his duties. -The work lasted three months or more, and though it is uncertain if -Burns received any extra pay for his labour he at least gained valuable -experience and competently handled his complex duties. The only adverse -criticism of his conduct related to a technical irregularity in his -final report, and this was the fault not of Burns himself but of one -of his subordinates. The passage of each year brought him higher on the -list of candidates for supervisor’s posts. Had he lived another year or -two he would automatically have been appointed even if his Edinburgh -friends had failed in their efforts to hasten the process. - -The prospect of promotion was becoming very real--so real that during -the very months when he was acting as supervisor Burns devoted some of -his scanty leisure to composing a group of political ballads. Patrick -Heron of Heron--the same Heron whose bank failure had once ruined half -Ayrshire--was the Whig candidate in a by-election at Kirkcudbright. -In return for the support of Burns’s pen Heron asked if he could do -anything for the poet. Burns’s reply showed his mind at its coldest -level of realism. Nothing could be done, he said, for two or three -years, until he reached the head of the supervisors’ list. Then a -political friend could be of service in getting him appointed in some -agreeable part of the kingdom and of still more service in hastening -his next step in rank. Collectorships went by favour, and the time he -must spend in the drudgery of a supervisorship would therefore depend -on the amount of influence his friends could exert. The letter is -graphic proof of Burns’s open-eyed acceptance of the system in which he -worked; it is also proof of his irrepressible lack of discretion. From -the viewpoint of mere self-interest he would have done better to hold -aloof from all political contests and, when the time came, to base his -appeal for influence upon his standing as a poet instead of identifying -himself with any party. But such calm calculation was not in his nature. - -In any case his hopes were vain. His disease was gaining on him; he -experienced sharp twinges of pain which he and his doctors called -rheumatism, but which were probably angina pectoris. In June and -again in December, 1795, he had serious illnesses which left him weak -and shaken. In the face of his increasing weakness he had taken on -additional labour by enlisting in a volunteer company organized in -Dumfries in the early spring. The manual of arms and frequent drills -were dangerous medicine for a diseased heart, and to this physical -labour Burns added active participation in all the business affairs of -the corps. His final breakdown could not in any circumstances have been -long delayed, but the Dumfries Volunteers undoubtedly hastened it. - -The winter of 1795-6 was a time of famine. Crops had been bad; trade -was dislocated by the war. Nearly one-fourth of the inhabitants of -Edinburgh were being fed by charity, and flour was so scarce that even -those who could afford it were asked to ration themselves to one loaf -of bread per capita a week. Conditions in the smaller towns were as -bad or worse; there were serious food riots in Dumfries in February -and March. With his health steadily declining Burns was exposed to -constant worry for the welfare of his family. Excise officers who were -unable over long periods to perform their duties because of illness -were reduced to half-pay, and as matters stood in the spring of 1796 -half-pay would have meant almost starvation for his children. That -things did not come to this pass for Burns was due to the generosity -of Adam Stobbie, who handled his work for him and refused compensation -for the service. This relieved some of his immediate anxiety, but did -little to answer the main question of what would become of Jean and the -children if he died. - -The problem of livelihood, never long absent from his mind, occupied -it during his last weeks almost to the exclusion of other thoughts. -The only prescriptions the doctors could offer in his illness involved -expenditures he could not afford, and his enlistment in the Volunteers -now returned to plague him. The tailor who had made his uniform began -to dun for payment, and to the poet’s fevered imagination it seemed -that his life was going to close as his father’s had, under the shadow -of a debtors’ prison. He spent some of his last days of consciousness -in writing frantic letters begging the friends to whom he had lent -money to repay their loans and asking others like George Thomson and -James Burness to advance him money. Thomson was the only one who gave -grudgingly. The others willingly and promptly sent what he asked, but -too late to lift the cloud from his dying mind. His last articulate -words were an imprecation against the tailor who had threatened him, -and he died without the comfort of knowing that his death would awaken -the generosity he had never experienced in his life, and that the -admirers of his poetry would make it possible for Jean to keep her home -together and for his children to be decently educated and launched on -respectable careers. - - - - -VI - -SONG - - -Burns never wrote a ‘Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind’, and left -only a few fragments of his projected satire on ‘The Poet’s Progress’. -Yet his letters and journals, as well as the poems themselves, so -definitely describe his moods and methods of composition that his -poetic psychology can be studied almost as fully as Wordsworth’s own. - -Conscious pleasure in poetry read or heard first came to him in boyhood -through one of Addison’s hymns; mingled with martial and patriotic -sentiment he found it also in ‘The History of Sir William Wallace’ and -the Life of Hannibal. This latter, he said, ‘gave my young ideas such -a turn that I used to strut in raptures up & down after the recruiting -drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier, while -the story of Wallace poured a Scotish prejudice in my veins which will -boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest.’ -But this, like the similar thrills from all the odds and ends of -English poetry and Scottish song which came his way, was commonplace -boyish emotion. The need and desire to write poetry of his own did -not awaken until his adolescent blood was warmed, in his ‘fifteenth -autumn’, by the first consciousness of sexual attraction in the company -of Nelly Kilpatrick. - - ‘I never expressly told her that I loved her.--Indeed I did not well - know myself, why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when - returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice - made my heartstrings thrill like an Eolian harp; and particularly, - why my pulse beat such a furious ratann when I looked and fingered - over her hand, to pick out the nettle-stings and thistles.--Among - her other love-inspiring qualifications, she sung sweetly, and ’twas - her favorite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in - rhyme.--I was not so presumtive as to imagine that I could make verses - like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my - girl sung a song which was said to be composed by a small country - laird’s son, on one of his father’s maids, with whom he was in love; - and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he, for ... he - had no more Scholarcraft than I had.’ - -‘Thus’, Burns summed up, with a juxtaposition of ideas never far -separated in his mind, ‘with me began Love and Poesy.’ In all respects -save one the episode was the commonest experience of calf-love. But -that one difference was decisive. When a girl roused him to lyric -fervour, Burns did not sit down and merely string his emotions together -in rime. Another element went to make the song; an element that -ultimately would mean more, poetically, to Burns than any girl--namely, -a tune. His mind did not work from emotion directly to words; it worked -from emotion to music, and the music brought the words which expressed -its mood. Herein Burns was almost unique among modern poets. Fully -to appreciate his lyrics one must hear them sung to the airs which -evoked them. To read many of them in bare print is like reading the -libretto of an opera. Even in his satires and epistles the process of -composition was usually the same, though another man’s poem, instead -of music, fired the train. Acquaintance with his models is almost as -illuminating as acquaintance with his tunes. - -His first effort at song-writing led to a conscious study of the poet’s -craft. The elaborate criticism appended to ‘Handsome Nell’ when Burns -copied the poem into his Commonplace Book is too obviously a bravura -piece to merit consideration; more noteworthy is his account of how he -studied his collection of English songs: ‘I pored over them, verse by -verse; carefully noting the true tender or sublime from affectation and -fustian.--I am convinced I owe much to this for my critic-craft such as -it is.’ But these were _English_ songs, and their effect on his early -work shows mainly in such things as ‘My father was a farmer’ and ‘Man -was made to mourn’, which latter in the Commonplace Book is entitled, -‘A Song: Tune, Peggy Bawn’. Even his most doleful lines came to him in -music. - -But lugubrious notes were not the only ones. It was as inevitable -that a young Scot should try his hand at metrical paraphrases of the -Psalms as that a young Etonian of the same century should paraphrase -Horace. The results in both cases are equally negligible. Youth has -to repeat the stale patterns of its predecessors before it can find -its own. It was much more important that ‘I murder hate by field or -flood’ was written in the same way. This is an epigrammatic song in the -Restoration manner, and as English in language as in style. But it was -written to a Scottish air, ‘Gillicrankie’. The innate Scottish culture -of the poet was beginning, as early as 1781, to assimilate and adapt -the alien materials of Restoration England. - -Though Burns failed to act on Richard Brown’s suggestion that he send -some of his early verses to a magazine, the idea stuck. The yeasty -stirrings of a still immature mind which had led him in 1780 to plague -his friends with pompous discourses on Pride and Courage were slowly -giving place to more personal thinking on topics which he better -understood. His customary chronological vagueness in referring to his -early manhood makes it uncertain whether he began his Commonplace -Book before he discovered the poems of Robert Fergusson, or after. -The internal evidence indicates the former. So does the elaborate -title-page: - - ‘Observations, Hints, Songs, Scraps of Poetry, &c., by Robt. Burness; - a man who had little art in making money, and still less in keeping - it; but was, however, a man of some sense, a great deal of honesty, - and unbounded good-will to every creature--rational or irrational. - As he was but little indebted to scholastic education, and bred at - a plough-tail, his performances must be strongly tinctured with his - unpolished, rustic way of life; but, as I believe they are really - _his own_, it may be some entertainment to a curious observer of - human-nature to see how a ploughman thinks and feels under the - pressure of Love, Ambition, Anxiety, Grief, with the like cares and - passions, which, however diversified by the modes and manners of life, - operate pretty much alike, I believe, in all the Species. - - “There are numbers in the world who do not want sense to make a - figure, so much as an opinion of their own abilities, to put them - upon recording their observations, and allowing them the same - importance which they do to those which appear in print.”--Shenstone. - - “Pleasing when youth is long expir’d to trace, - The forms our pencil, or our pen design’d. - Such was our youthful air, and shape, and face! - Such the soft image of our youthful mind.” - - Ibidem.’ - -Burns was already conscious of something more in himself than there was -in the average young peasant; as an escape from worries over his own -health and the family’s future he was undertaking to leave a record of -himself to edify some hypothetical future reader. Whatever tinge of -humility there might be on his title-page was, like the pretence at -third-person reporting, assumed. He meant to prove that a peasant youth -shared the feelings of his betters and could rime and moralize to as -good effect as they. But the title-page, the quotations from Shenstone, -and the opening paragraph about Love all announce a programme he soon -abandoned. When he began the book he was still thinking in the terms -of his first letters about Pride and Courage; before he ended it he was -thinking in poetry. - -Though he might continue to assert that he rimed for fun, the fact was -that from the day in April, 1783, when he commenced the Commonplace -Book he was composing for publication, though not necessarily for -print. His earliest verses were either the expression of a personal -emotion, social _jeux d’esprit_, or conventional exercises in -versification, with no purpose beyond the momentary and personal one; -the ‘Observations, Scraps of Song, &c.’, were to be his legacy to the -world. Not by chance did the Commonplace Book and its successor survive -the general destruction of his private papers when he supposed himself -on the eve of flight to Jamaica. Even though by that time the best of -his verse had escaped the hazard of manuscript and was safely enshrined -in the good black print of the Kilmarnock volume, he could not bring -himself to destroy these records. It was well that he saved them. The -Commonplace Book remains the sole record of what Burns was doing, -intellectually and poetically, between April, 1783, and October, 1785. -Commencing with self-conscious commentaries on life and on his own -first efforts at writing, it reveals before its close his steady growth -in artistic competence. - -Not that it resembles the notebooks of Keats and Shelley, with their -evidence of how poems grow in the poet’s mind. Burns’s poems stayed -in his mind until they were mature. His poverty and his method of -composing to music combined to prevent his committing half-formed ideas -to paper. Paper was scarce and expensive; often in his early days he -failed to write down his poems even when they were complete. Sometimes -he forgot them entirely; sometimes he managed to reconstruct them long -afterwards, as he did when he recalled ‘The Mauchline Wedding’ for -Mrs. Dunlop’s amusement. One of the few poems composed on paper is the -disastrous ‘Elegy on the Death of Sir James Hunter Blair’, which Burns -drafted in his Border journal. Here he was working with an English -verse-form for which no melody existed. It took him three different -sittings painfully to wring out the first seven stanzas. Again in -1791 he reported that he had ‘these several months been hammering at -an Elegy’ on Miss Burnet of Monboddo, but found elegy ‘so exhausted a -subject that any new idea on the business is not to be expected’; the -original manuscript of the ‘Lament for James Earl of Glencairn’ reveals -similar struggles. When no tune sang itself in his head, composition -was labour and the results were wooden. The ‘Lament’, with a more lyric -stanza and with stronger personal feeling at its root, came nearer -than the others to success, but even it cannot be ranked among the -great elegies. Declining Cunningham’s suggestion of a theme, he once -said, ‘I have two or three times in my life composed from the wish, -rather than from the impulse, but I never succeeded to any purpose.’ In -commemorating Lord Glencairn, wish and impulse combined, yet even here -he did not wholly succeed because the tune was lacking. - -Poetic expression with Burns was not, as with Wordsworth, the fruit -of emotion recollected in tranquillity; it was the fruit of emotion -expressing itself to music. Though as he grew older the emotion no -longer needed to be so strongly personal as when he wrote his earliest -songs, the dependence on music became correspondingly greater. How he -composed in his later years he told George Thomson in the autumn of -1793: - - ‘Until I am compleat master of a tune, in my own singing (such as - it is) I never can compose for it.--My way is: I consider the - poetic Sentiment, correspondent to my idea of the musical - expression; then chuse my theme; begin one stanza; when that is - composed, which is generally the most difficult part of the - business, I walk out, sit down now & then, look out for objects in - Nature around me that are in unison or harmony with the cogitations - of my fancy & workings of my bosom; humming every now & then the air - with the verses I have framed: when I feel my Muse beginning to jade, - I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, & there commit my - effusions to paper; swinging, at intervals, on the hind-legs of my - elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, as - my pen goes on.-- - - Seriously, this, at home, is almost invariably my way.--What damn’d - Egotism!’ - -Though it would probably be impossible to overstress Robert Fergusson’s -influence on Burns’s development, the elder poet’s primary service was -to clarify and confirm ideas already present but as yet inarticulate -in Burns’s mind. He knew what he liked, and what his own poetic -impulses were; the discovery of Fergusson enabled him to define -both his method and his objective. To realize how much he matured -intellectually between the beginning of the Commonplace Book in 1783 -and its conclusion in 1785, one need merely read the strutting, -self-conscious, and essentially empty criticism of ‘expletive phrases’ -of ‘too serious sentiment’, and ‘flimsy strain’ which he appended to -‘Handsome Nell’, or the pseudo-devotional passage about the grand end -of human life being ‘to cultivate an intercourse with that Being to -whom we owe life’. These things of 1783 are juvenilia. The following, -written in September, 1785, is adult: - - ‘There is a certain irregularity in the Old Scotch Songs, a - redundancy of syllables with respect to that exactness of accent - and measure that the English Poetry requires, but which glides in, - most melodiously with the respective tunes to which they are set. For - instance, the fine old song of “The Mill Mill O,” to give it a plain - prosaic reading, it halts prodigiously out of measure; on the other - hand, the song set to the same tune in Bremner’s collection of Scotch - Songs which begins “To Fanny fair could I impart,” &c., it is most - exact measure, and yet, let them both be sung before a real critic, - one above the biasses of prejudice, but a thorough Judge of Nature, - how flat and spiritless will the last appear, how trite, and lamely - methodical, compared with the wild-warbling cadence, the heart-moving - melody of the first. This particularly is the case with all those - airs which end with a hypermetrical syllable. There is a degree of - wild irregularity in many of the compositions and fragments which - are daily sung to them by my compeers, the common people--a certain - happy arrangement of Old Scotch syllables, and yet, very frequently, - nothing, not even _like_ rhyme, or sameness of jingle at the ends of - the lines. This has made me sometimes imagine that perhaps, it might - be possible for a Scotch Poet, with a nice, judicious ear, to set - compositions to many of our most favorite airs ... independent of - rhyme altogether....’ - -With nothing except mother-wit and a sure ear to guide him, Burns -had reached conclusions regarding poetic rhythm at complete variance -with the critical theories of his century and beyond the practice -of even nineteenth-century orthodoxy. He had recognized that the -real charm of folk-poetry lies in the fact that it is musical rather -than regular. In an age when the essence of poetry was thought to -abide in the accurately counted syllables of the heroic couplet such -an opinion would have seemed not merely heresy but sheer insanity. -Compared with it, Coleridge’s supposed innovation of hypermetrical -syllables in _Christabel_ is timid conventionality. Blake alone among -Burns’s contemporaries had bolder theories of rhythm, and his work, -which the Scotsman never saw, had to wait more than half a century -for recognition. Burns later expended much time and ink in trying to -persuade George Thomson that a song could be poetry even if all its -lines did not count up the same number of syllables, but he was never -optimistic enough to offer that silly body a lyric which dispensed with -rime. - -So, too, in regard to the physiology and psychology of composition, -Burns, before he ever published a line, had reached closer to -fundamentals than an academician like Hugh Blair could ever go. Like -Milton he had recognized from his own experience that there is in many -poets a seasonal rhythm of creativeness. In himself it usually began -in August, and continued for several months. That month, he said in -his autobiography, was always a carnival in his bosom; in 1793 he told -Thomson, ‘Autumn is my propitious season. I make more verses in it, -than all the year else,’ and at the beginning of the next summer he -repeated the assertion: ‘Now, & for six or seven months _I shall be -quite in song_.’ In other words, it took all the scanty sunshine of the -Scottish summer to bring him physically to that level of well-being at -which creation was possible. - -The psychology of composition, moreover, which he explained in prose -in 1793 he had defined in poetry in the epistle to William Simpson -of Ochiltree, composed in May, 1785, and published in the Kilmarnock -volume. It is surprisingly like A. E. Housman’s, who recorded that some -of his best poems came to him spontaneously while walking on Hampstead -Heath and thinking of nothing in particular, after drinking a pint of -beer at luncheon. Burns’s formula is precisely similar: - - The Muse, nae Poet ever fand her, - Till by himself he learn’d to wander - Adown some trottin burn’s meander, - An’ no think lang. - -In these circumstances, when his emotional pressure was high enough, -lines and stanzas would come unsought to his mind, and it was to -this experience he referred when he repeatedly called himself ‘a -Bard of Nature’s making’. Burns knew as well as Housman did that -this spontaneous birth was only the beginning and not the end of -composition. Gilbert reported the process without realizing its -significance: - - ‘Robert often composed without any regular plan. When anything made - a strong impression on his mind, so as to rouse it to any poetic - exertion, he would give way to the impulse, and embody the thought - in rhyme. If he hit on two or three stanzas to please him, he would - then think of proper introductory, connecting, and concluding - stanzas; hence the middle of a poem was often first produced.’ - -It suited with the role of inspired ploughman which Burns assumed among -the Edinburgh gentry to give the impression that the finished poem -also was spontaneous, but he knew better. His poetry was often born -under the open sky, with the physical rhythm of his farm-work supplying -the muscular accompaniment he later sought in strolls on the banks -of Nith, but it was matured and revised by concentrated study of the -implications of his theme. As the piper has to walk his measure, so -Burns’s body moved to the rhythm of the tune which was in his mind, -and the rhythm brought the words which expressed his mood. - -It was only Scots music that saved Burns in the end from complete -subjection to the false elegance of his century. Though he was better -read than most of his ‘patrons’ ever realized, he had the self-educated -man’s diffidence in the face of established reputations. His ear, so -quick to distinguish ‘the true tender or sublime’ from ‘affectation -or fustian’ in a lyric, failed him in the reading of more pretentious -works. ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ is shot full of verbal echoes -of English poets; what is worse, it echoes their sentiments, in such -a passage as Stanza X, to an extent which divorces the thought from -all the realities of peasant life. He never acquired the degree of -sophistication which would have enabled him to use the current English -conventions freely and originally, yet he was too sophisticated to -use old folk conventions when they were not reinforced by music. Thus -he never--with the possible exception of ‘John Barleycorn’--wrote a -serious ballad. His political verses, and above all such an uproarious -parody as ‘The Ballad of Grizzel Grimme’, show that he had all the -ballad conventions at his tongue’s end; he had collected numerous old -ballad texts, of which Dr. Currie named more than a dozen to Sir Walter -Scott, though without thinking it worth while to preserve them; yet he -could employ the ballad only in satire or burlesque. Thanks to music, -he was able in all seriousness to sing a song in the old folk style, -but he could not tell a story. - -Even his Scottish vocabulary was more literary and derivative than -his contemporaries realized. It was not so much a direct transcript -of Ayrshire speech as it was a generalized vernacular pieced together -from Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, and the anonymous folk lyrists -and ballad writers. He was genuinely interested in the variations of -dialect--on his Border tour, for instance, he jotted down definitions -of local words which were new to him--but his poetic use of it -was chiefly due to its pithiness, its humour, and, above all, its -flexibility. This was what he had in mind when he admitted to Robert -Anderson ‘the advantages he enjoyed ... from the _copia verborum_, the -command of phraseology, which the knowledge and use of the English -and Scottish dialects afforded him’. He habitually alternated between -Scottish and English spellings of the same word, as the exigencies of -rime and measure required, thereby achieving a more flexible expression -than was possible in either dialect by itself. His vernacular -writing, in short, was nearer to Lowell’s New England speech or -Kipling’s Cockney than it was to Gawain Douglas’s or William Dunbar’s -single-minded expression in his native tongue. Even Robert Fergusson’s -dialect, with its strong infusion of Fifeshire elements, is closer than -Burns’s to being a direct transcript from life. - -In one sense the poems in the Kilmarnock volume which were written -under Robert Fergusson’s influence are a divergence from Burns’s -deepest impulses, even though his method of composing them was -fundamentally the same as in his song-writing. Instead of a tune to -which he could set his own words Fergusson supplied a pattern or a -theme to be adapted to his own experience. The parallels between ‘The -Plane-stanes and the Causey’ and ‘The Brigs of Ayr’, between ‘The Daft -Days’ and ‘Hallowe’en’ or ‘The Holy Fair’, between ‘Caller Oysters’ -and ‘Scotch Drink’ or ‘To a Haggis’ are too obvious and have been too -often mentioned to need reiteration. Burns borrowed, but he did not -copy; even borrowed phraseology he made his own. His imitations almost -invariably surpassed their originals both in poetic fire and in the -epigrammatic quality essential for quotability. Yet in these forms of -verse he showed no inventiveness. His own phrase that Fergusson had -roused him to _emulating_ vigour is literally true. That Fergusson’s -impetus failed to sweep Burns on to discover similar themes of his -own reveals him as after all on foreign ground. Nevertheless, by -demonstrating that poetry could still be written in the vernacular, -Fergusson had done inestimable service. Beyond that his influence -brought Burns to a dead end. The unhappy young lawyer’s clerk had no -music in his soul. - -Allan Ramsay rather than Fergusson showed the way to the sort of poetry -without musical setting in which Burns found his genuine freedom and -inspiration. The imitations of Fergusson end with the lines ‘To a -Haggis’, written in December, 1786; Ramsay supplied the models for the -vernacular epistles which Burns never wholly ceased to write until a -few months before his death. And between the poetic epistle as Burns -wrote it and the dramatic monologue in which he also excelled there -is little basic difference. The writer of a poetic epistle is usually -dramatizing himself. Like the professional humorist, he assumes a -role which is a projection or exaggeration of one phase of his own -temperament, but which is not really himself as the working-day world -knows him. For Burns to pass from such self-dramatization as marks the -epistles to Lapraik, Simpson, Rankine, and Smith to the pure drama of -‘The Auld Farmer’ or even ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ involved merely an -extension of imaginative scope and not a different technique. - -To put it another way, Burns could either talk or he could sing. -When he was not writing to music he was at his best only when he was -speaking, either for himself as personified bard or humorous spectator, -or as he identified his own personality with another’s. Nothing in the -poems composed in 1786 more clearly shows his maturing artistic powers -than does the dramatic character of ‘The Auld Farmer’ and ‘Holy Willie’ -when contrasted with the lyrics of ‘The Jolly Beggars’, composed the -year before. In these last, magnificent as they are, the reader can -seldom forget that it is Burns who is speaking through the mouths of -the vagabonds. The lyrics are only half dramatic, and perhaps it was -realization of this that made the poet in 1793 tell George Thomson that -none of the songs pleased him except the last--in which Burns himself -is speaking as the ‘Bard of no regard’. In ‘Holy Willie’ and ‘The Auld -Farmer’, on the other hand, the poet has identified himself with the -character whom he is portraying as completely as Browning ever did with -Fra Lippo Lippi or the Duke of Ferrara. - -Less than adequate notice has been taken of the fact that Burns had -mastered the art of the dramatic lyric and the dramatic monologue more -than half a century before Browning gave the forms their names. His own -statement that all his early lyrics had a personal basis has both led -biographers on wild-goose chases after autobiographical elements in -songs which possess none, and has been used to give false emphasis to -many poems really based on personal experience. Such interpretations -ignore the very foundation of creative art. That the impulse to write -a lyric comes from personal emotion does not mean that the finished -poem is literal history. Keats’s love for Fanny Brawne helped to make -‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ what it is, but not even Mr. Middleton Murry has -been fatuous enough to call Madeline a portrait of Fanny. Rose Aylmer -was not necessarily as perfect as Landor’s elegy upon her; William -Douglas may have had no real intention of laying him down and dying for -Annie Laurie. Yet the whole Highland Mary legend, for instance, rests -on precisely this sort of treatment of a handful of Burns’s songs, in -obstinate disregard of the plain fact that the woman who inspires a -love-lyric no more needs to be herself a lyric woman than the model for -the Victory of Samothrace needed to be a woman with wings. Everyone -has recognized Burns’s unsuccess in his effort to dramatize himself for -Clarinda’s benefit as the pure man of sentiment; his true achievement -could be better understood by recognition of his success in dramatizing -his real self in many of his best ‘personal’ poems. From the ‘Mary -Morison’ of his youth to the ‘O wert thou in the cauld blast’ of his -last illness, his best songs display not Burns himself but a dramatic -projection of one aspect of his mind. - -Commentators from Henry Mackenzie onward have regretted that Burns -never carried out his plans for writing a drama. Yet his triumph in the -dramatic monologue is the best reason for believing that the attempt -would have failed. His numerous references to the drama and dramatic -writing never so much as hint that Burns had grasped the elements -of theatrical technique. For him a play was merely a vehicle for -declamatory speeches and the expression of ‘sentiments’ which would -make neat quotations; a cobbling together of purple patches and of -scattered episodes supposed to depict ‘originality of character’. If it -ever occurred to him that a good play is a unified structure in which -a single impression is built up through a series of artfully contrived -climaxes, he never put the idea on paper. But even had he understood -the technique he had not the right psychological approach for dramatic -writing, any more than Browning had. The true dramatist stands apart -from his characters and develops them from without; the writer of -dramatic monologues identifies himself for the moment with another -individual and develops the character from within. The two temperaments -are seldom united in one man, and Burns in turning away even from the -pastoral drama which Mackenzie had urged him to undertake was once -again instinctively following the bent of his own genius. In the light -of what he accomplished in his chosen forms, Mackenzie’s suggestion was -almost as inept as John Moore’s proposal that he try something like -Virgil’s Eclogues. - -Before he went to Edinburgh Burns had explored his own capacities, but -had not yet realized more than half of them. Fergusson had shown him -how to write satires and descriptions in the vernacular; Ramsay had -revealed the possibilities of the poetic epistle. But his interest -in the folk-songs of which the words and melodies haunted him, still -seemed a rustic or even childish survival. So far as he knew, it was -like taking nursery rimes seriously as poetry. Though he must have -been aware that scholars of repute were beginning to collect old -ballads, he had not yet discovered that they were turning also to the -words and music of folk-songs. In this respect at least, his Edinburgh -sojourn was of incalculable benefit. Apparently he never met David -Herd, the greatest collector among his contemporaries, but he soon -became acquainted with Herd’s published work and learned that even -some university professors esteemed such things. Sending a couple -of songs, ‘the composition of two Ayrshire Mechanics’, to the Rev. -William Greenfield a few weeks after arriving in the city, he hailed -that eloquent but incontinent clergyman as ‘Professor of the Belles -lettres de la Nature’; in the following summer he told William Tytler -that he had once a great many fragments of traditional literature, but -as he had no idea that anybody cared for them, he had forgotten them. -And his next remark showed that he already possessed the essential -qualification of the collector: ‘I invariably hold it sacriledge to -add anything of my own to help out with the shatter’d wrecks of these -venerable old compositions; but they have many various readings.’ Yet -not even then, not even though the singing of old melodies was one -of the commonest amusements both in Edinburgh drawing rooms and at -convivial meetings at taverns, did he realize immediately the task and -the opportunity before him. - -The convivial meetings at first meant much more to him than the -drawing-rooms. The jolly gentlemen who made up the Crochallan Fencibles -had probably as a group little interest in pure poetry, but they had -a very lively interest in brisk songs. If the songs happened to be -improper, that was no handicap among a club which included Charles -Hay and William Smellie and Robert Cleghorn, and to whom Alexander -Cunningham used to sing ‘charmingly’ one of the most indecent of Irish -ditties. Burns’s memory was already well stored with such gems, and -in this congenial company he added to his stock, enriched old songs -with new stanzas of his own, and occasionally composed original verses -of the same type, as he had often done at Mauchline. As a means of -enhancing the pleasures of male company over a bowl of punch such -song-writing amused him and delighted the Fencibles. - -Not until after his Edinburgh _Poems_ were off the press did it begin -to dawn upon him that he might also win new fame in the drawing-room -and--what meant much more to him--do a patriotic service to Scotland. -In the last weeks of April, 1787, he made the acquaintance of an -engraver named James Johnson, who was just bringing out the first -volume of a work which he called _The Scots Musical Museum_. Johnson -was known to Smellie, Dunbar, and others of Burns’s friends, but he -cannot have been in the inner circle of the Crochallans, or Burns -would have met him sooner. He was almost illiterate--his picturesquely -bad spelling is notable even for the eighteenth century--but he was -an enthusiast for the collection and preservation of the traditional -music and songs of his country. He had invented a process for printing -music by stamping the notes on pewter plates instead of the steel or -copper engraving then generally employed. Though the result was a -mean and smudgy page, the process was much cheaper than the old one -and encouraged Johnson to try his hand at publishing. His enthusiasm, -however, far exceeded his knowledge. He had had difficulty in gathering -the hundred songs which made up his first volume, and had even eked it -out with a few English pieces. His meeting with Burns not only remade -the _Museum_, but, poetically considered, was the most important event -of the poet’s life in the capital. - -Writing to Johnson on the eve of his Border tour Burns regretted that -they had not met sooner: ‘I have met with few people whose company & -conversation gave me more pleasure, because I have met with few whose -sentiments are so congenial to my own.’ But though he contributed a -song or two to the collection, the idea that he might take an active -part in the work was still far from his mind. The fantastic Earl of -Buchan, as early as February, had advised Burns to ‘fire [his] Muse at -Scottish story and Scottish scene.’ Burns had replied, in language even -more inflated than the Earl’s: ‘I wish for nothing more than to make a -leisurely Pilgrimage through my native country; to sit & muse on those -once hard-contended fields where Caledonia, rejoicing, saw her bloody -lion borne through broken ranks to victory and fame; and catching -the inspiration to pour the deathless Names in Song.’ Unfortunately, -added the poet, he had instead to go back to working for his living. -Nevertheless, the Border tour offered a chance to fulfil part of the -Earl’s suggestion--according to Burns’s real tastes, if not the Earl’s. -His greatest pleasures on the journey were not the civic receptions -and the elaborate hospitality of the gentry, but the sight of Gala -Water, Leader Haughs and Yarrow, the Bush aboon Traquair, Elibanks and -Elibraes, and other spots celebrated in song. It made no difference -whether the song was singable before ladies or before Crochallans, so -long as it was Scottish, and old. - -The Highland tours added so effectively to his stock that in 1793 he -was able to say that he had made pilgrimages to every spot commemorated -in Scottish song except Lochaber and the Braes of Ballenden. Presumably -on his passages through Edinburgh in August and September he talked -with Johnson, but not until late October, after his return from -Ochtertyre, did he really begin to put his energies into the work. -Johnson obviously had solicited his help, and the poet’s first move was -to write to all his friends who possessed words or music which might be -usable. Nor did he confine himself to his own circle of acquaintance. -Learning to his chagrin that he had unwittingly passed near the home of -the Rev. John Skinner without calling to pay his respects to the author -of ‘Tullochgorum’ and ‘John o’ Badenyon’, he seized the opportunity -given by receipt of a poetic epistle from Skinner to beg the venerable -clergyman’s support for Johnson’s enterprise. He soon started also to -fit words of his own to fine melodies which either lacked them or had -unsuitable ones--at first with a personal motive, in order to publish -the complimentary verses he had written to Margaret Chalmers and -Charlotte Hamilton, but soon with no purpose except that of supplying -his favourite music with words which could be sung. Moreover, he -commenced to gather all available publications of Scottish songs and -song music. How thoroughly he went into this search is revealed by his -quiet remark to George Thomson five years later: ‘Let me have a list of -your airs, with the first line of the verses you intend for them.... -I say, the first line of the verses, because if they are verses that -have appeared in any of our Collections of songs, I know them & can -have recourse to them.’ He had in fact ranged so widely in the old -song books that even yet his editors have been unable to identify the -originals of some of the songs he altered and adapted for the _Museum_, -and later on for Thomson’s _Select Collection_. But though in 1787 he -realized better than Johnson did the magnitude of the task and the -opportunity before them, he was still unaware of its true scope. He -conjectured that there would be three volumes of a hundred songs each. -The completed work filled six. - -From October, 1787, onwards Burns was in fact though not in name the -chief editor of the _Museum_. He collected words and music, wrote -prefaces for the successive volumes, and helped to enlist the aid of a -competent musician, Stephen Clarke, organist of the Episcopal chapel -in Edinburgh, in harmonizing the airs. Johnson willingly submitted to -the poet’s leadership, which he needed. The surviving correspondence -shows Burns carrying on a struggle which nothing except his enthusiasm -for the work could at times have made endurable. Johnson required -constant supervision even in such elementary matters as spelling; -Clarke’s carelessness and indolence were maddening. The work sold -slowly and Johnson, under the pressure of other affairs, inclined to -procrastinate. ‘Why,’ Burns asked in 1793, and the passage is typical -of many, ‘did you not send me those tunes & verses that Clarke & you -cannot make out? Let me have them as soon as possible, that, while he -is at hand, I may settle the matter with him.’ Clarke, ‘with his usual -indolence’, was worse. More than once he mislaid or lost whole sheafs -of songs which had been entrusted to him. ‘“The Lochmaben harper”’, -said the poet in 1795, ‘I fear I shall never recover; & it is a famous -old song.--The rest are, I doubt, irrecoverable.--I think it hard -that, after so much trouble in gathering these tunes, they should be -lost in this trifling way.--Clarke has been shamefully careless.’ Yet -Burns’s enthusiasm kept him going, however negligent or incompetent -the partners on whom he had to depend. The time-table of the work is -sufficient proof of his influence. Volume II, prepared while he was in -Edinburgh, was ready six months after Volume I; the next two volumes, -for which the poet’s contributions had to be made by correspondence, -took two years each. Volume V was prepared while Burns was working also -for George Thomson; it was four years on the stocks. The final volume, -prepared by Johnson’s unaided efforts, took six years, even though he -had still on hand a considerable quantity of Burns’s verse for which -space had been lacking in the earlier numbers. - -Burns’s preface to the second volume, published in February, 1788, -in the very midst of the Clarinda imbroglio, shows how completely, -in the fifteen months since his first arrival in Edinburgh, the poet -had awakened to the literary importance of folk-song. ‘Ignorance and -Prejudice’, he wrote, ‘may perhaps affect to sneer at the simplicity -of the poetry or music of some of these pieces; but their having been -for ages the favourites of Nature’s Judges--the Common People, was -to the Editor a sufficient test of their merit....’ He was no longer -apologetic for his interest in popular literature. If the highbrows -could not appreciate it, so much the worse for the highbrows. He -was determined, moreover, that no poet of the people should lack -recognition if it were possible to give it. ‘Wherever the old words -could be recovered, they have been preserved; both as generally suiting -better the genius of the tunes, and to preserve the productions of -those earlier Sons of the Scottish Muses, some of whose names deserved -a better fate than has befallen them--“Buried ’mong the wreck of -things which were.” Of our more modern Songs, the Editor has inserted -the Authors’ names as far as he could ascertain them.’ The passage -is almost a direct transcript, even to the hackneyed quotation from -Blair’s _Grave_, of what Burns had written in the Commonplace Book two -and a half years before, when he added that it had given him ‘many a -heart-ake’ to reflect that the names of such glorious old Bards were -clean forgotten. No more of them should be forgotten if he could do -anything to prevent it. The ‘communal’ theory of ballad-composition -still slumbered in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land; Burns was sure that somewhere at -the source of every old song was an individual poet of like passions -with himself, and such as he himself might still be but for the -accident of print. - -His one exception to the rule of publishing authors’ names was his own -contributions. He told Mrs. Dunlop that the songs signed ‘R’, ‘B’, or -‘X’ were his own, and those signed ‘Z’ were old songs he had altered -or enlarged. But no one can go through the volumes with this simple -key and identify all of Burns’s contributions. His own negligence and -Johnson’s omitted his initials from numerous songs unquestionably his -own, and the verses signed ‘Z’ have puzzled the ingenuity of editors -ever since. Burns admitted that ‘of a good many of them, little more -than the Chorus is ancient; tho’ there is no reason for telling every -body this piece of intelligence.’ Sometimes his own annotations or -the survival of earlier texts show the extent of his contributions, -ranging from eking out a too-brief song with an extra stanza of his own -to composing a whole lyric to fit a fragment of traditional chorus. -Public opinion unanimously credits Burns with ‘Auld Lang Syne’, yet he -never claimed it. He declared that it ‘had never been in print, nor -even in manuscript’, until he took it down from an old man’s singing. -Three different times, for people as unlike as Mrs. Dunlop, Robert -Riddell, and George Thomson, he wrote out the words without even an -indirect claim to their authorship. Nevertheless, no trace of the song -in anything like Burns’s form has ever been found in earlier records, -and the public has refused to believe that a poem of such appeal could -have been current without being noticed. On the other hand, every -stanza of ‘A Red Red Rose’ has been traced to some older poem; yet -Burns’s skill in selecting the one good image in a mass of commonplace -and weaving his cento of borrowings into a single compact and vivid -lyric makes the song his own, as _Macbeth_ is Shakespeare’s and not -Holinshed’s. - -In such lyrics as these and scores of others Burns had achieved a sort -of dramatic impersonation which far surpassed even the best of his -earlier monologues and dramatic lyrics. Guided always by the spirit of -the music, he had so identified himself with the thoughts and feelings -of the anonymous and half-articulate folk poets whose songs he was -rescuing from oblivion that the most critical eye cannot be certain -where their work ends and Burns’s begins. Again and again he took -fragments of old work and not only reunited them into coherent wholes -but gave the restored poem the lyric elevation its original author had -felt but could not express. Emerson said that an institution was the -lengthened shadow of a single man: Scottish song as the world knows -it today is the lengthened shadow of Robert Burns. What he did not -actually write is so coloured by his influence that it could not exist -without him. With the exception of Lady Nairne’s, his was the last -poetry written in the old folk tradition. The romantic sentimentality -which tinges Burns’s songs at their weakest, overspreads many of Lady -Nairne’s; Scott’s masterpiece, ‘Bonnie Dundee’, is glorious, but it -is not a folk-song. Most of what has been written since 1800 is merely -imitation Burns. - -The _Museum_ was Burns’s opportunity to combine his poetic inclinations -with his fervent patriotism. But it was more than that. By enlisting -the poet’s help in his enterprise, Johnson unwittingly furnished him -the means of sustaining his creative life amid his toil as farmer and -Exciseman. After 1788 extended composition was probably impossible -for Burns. He could scarcely hope to be revisited by the almost -continuous excitement under which he wrote the greater part of his -first volume, and without emotional excitement he could not create. -He had plenty of leisure for writing during his Edinburgh days, but -the urge was lacking. His whole sojourn there produced less poetry -than a single month at the beginning of 1786. Removal to Ellisland, -with all the strain of its ‘uncouth cares and anxieties’, brought his -creativeness to a still lower ebb. Repeatedly he complained that the -Muses had deserted him; during his first two years on the farm the -‘Lines in Friars Carse Hermitage’ were almost his only serious attempt -at non-musical composition, and in the revision of the poem he wavered -between versions in a manner wholly unlike the vigour of 1786. The -frequency, indeed, with which he circulated both versions among his -friends suggests at times a bankrupt’s clinging to the last relic of -his prosperity. But thanks to the _Museum_ he had work to do which -could be shaped to music as he followed his business, and be committed -to paper in his snatches of free time. - -Meanwhile, under Burns’s leadership, the whole plan of the _Museum_ -had been altered. The original scheme had been merely to collect the -existing songs. For this task--at least for all the songs that were -printable--Johnson’s first estimate of two volumes was not a serious -understatement. Burns, ransacking the collections of instrumental -music, and stealing time from his farm work to listen to a fiddler -playing over the pieces that had interested him, discovered, however, -that Scottish music was teeming with good tunes to which no words had -ever been set. The reels and strathspeys which fiddlers and pipers -played as dance tunes had just as much lilting charm as the airs -of traditional songs. His plan now was nothing more nor less than -supplying words to every cottage melody which was capable of vocal -interpretation. He was also making musical experiments in tempo, -finding that gay tunes played in slow time might be transformed into -‘the very language of pathos’. The name ‘Museum’ was growing steadily -more inappropriate; the work was becoming an experimental laboratory -in both poetry and music. Probably Burns never fully defined, even to -himself, the scope of the ambitious project he did not live to achieve, -but the more than three hundred songs he left are evidence that if -anyone could have achieved it, he could. - -Not that all these songs are masterpieces. Burns had no illusions -on that score. His contention was always that the music was the -important thing, and that a good air might better have mediocre -words than none at all. Nevertheless when he was composing Scottish -words to tunes of his own choice the percentage of the commonplace -was small and the range of themes extraordinarily large. The critics -who read autobiography into every love poem pass lightly over the -fact that in some of the best love lyrics, such as ‘Tam Glen’, ‘An’ -O for ane-and-twenty, Tam’, and ‘Whistle and I’ll come to you, my -lad’, the speaker is a woman, and that such wholly dramatic lyrics -as ‘M’Pherson’s Farewell’ and ‘John Anderson’ have a more sustained -intensity of emotion than the admittedly autobiographic ‘Ae fond -kiss’. When Burns’s lyrics were commonplace it was usually because -he was composing them to tunes not of his own choice; above all when -such assigned composition demanded English words. Music which worked -downward from the intellectual to the emotional centres could never -give the same creative release as when the engagement of the emotions -came first. Such was the case with the last of his major poetic -projects--supplying lyrics for George Thomson’s _Select Collection of -Scotish Airs_--but before turning to that work something must be said -of the last and finest of the poems which he did not write to music. - -‘Tam o’ Shanter’ is not only Burns’s greatest single poem but one -of the finest short poetic narratives in all literature. It is the -only one of Burns’s works of which it may truly be asserted that -he opened a new field wherein he never had the chance to reveal -the full range of his powers. In the satire and the epistle, as in -the lyric, he had abundantly displayed both his strength and his -limitations. In the versified folk-tale ‘Tam’ stands alone; it is, as -he said, his ‘standard performance in the Poetical line’. Though he -was doubtless right in concluding that it showed ‘a force of genius -& a finishing polish that I despair of ever excelling’, he might in -happier circumstances have equalled it. But here, as in the satires and -epistles, his inspiration came from without, and the stimulus was never -repeated. - -The story of its composition is too familiar to need rehearsing in -detail. In 1789 Francis Grose the antiquary arrived at Friars Carse -in the course of a collecting tour. He had successfully published an -elaborately illustrated work on the antiquities of England and Wales, -and was now gathering material for a companion volume on Scotland. -The fat and jovial captain, whose encyclopædic knowledge ranged from -ancient arms and armour, costume, and ecclesiastical and military -architecture, to the ribald slang of his day, was as unlike Sir Walter -Scott’s bookish Jonathan Oldbuck as any man could well be. Beside his -vast erudition and ardent spirit the amateurish antiquarianism of -Robert Riddell faded away. Grose was one of the most stimulating men -Burns ever met, and the friendship which sprang up between them had -the double basis of community of interest and congeniality of spirit. -Burns saw in Grose’s projected book an opportunity to glorify his -own birthplace, and suggested that the ruins of Alloway Kirk were a -good subject for an illustration. Grose, no doubt mentally comparing -the scrubby little church with the glories of Melrose and Arbroath, -hesitated. Alloway had neither grandeur of architecture nor richness -of historical association. The latter, however, might be supplied. -Burns had been telling some of the tales of the supernatural which he -had heard in his boyhood, and Grose agreed to include the picture of -Alloway if Burns would furnish a witch-legend to accompany it. Thus -casually his greatest poem was born. - -Burns’s qualifications for writing this tale of witchcraft were -analogous to his qualifications for writing folk-songs. In each -instance he belonged by education to a world where such things were no -longer alive. But his childhood and youth had been spent among people -to whom they were still real. Intellectually he had no more belief -in witchcraft than Benjamin Franklin had, but he knew the minds of -the people who did believe. Hence the blend of broad humour and real -terror which makes the poem unique. To an Elizabethan audience there -was nothing humorous about the witches in _Macbeth_; they were real -beings inspiring fear and hatred. To Washington Irving or Charles -Dickens a tale of the supernatural was purely an excursion into the -Land of Make-Believe. It is only when a belief is fading but not yet -dead that it can be handled with the mixture of humour and conviction -which Burns used. Ghost stories suffered the same fate about a century -later, as scepticism regarding personal immortality became more widely -prevalent. And ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ is as perfect in structure as it is -unique in tone. Custom cannot stale it. To read it or hear it read -for the hundredth time is still to be swept along by the rush of the -narrative and to realize more clearly the artistry which balances each -increasingly wild episode with its introductory paragraph of humorous -philosophizing. A few of its early readers, Mrs. Dunlop among them, -thought the poem scandalously indecent; to the rest it was an artless -effusion of the Heaven-taught ploughman. If any early reader realized -that besides being a merry tale it was a consummate work of art the -opinion was not committed to print. In 1791 literary art still connoted -eighteenth-century ‘elegance’. - -Could Burns have had more of the society of a man like Grose, had even -young Walter Scott of Edinburgh, who in the intervals of his legal -studies was already steeping himself in the ballads and legends of the -Border, thought it worth while occasionally to ride as far as Dumfries -to visit the man whom he had once seen in an Edinburgh drawing-room, -the world might have more poems like ‘Tam o’ Shanter’. But there was no -one in Dumfries to provide the necessary stimulus. Robert Riddell took -much but had little to give; his sister-in-law Maria belonged too much -to the world of fashion to have any enthusiasm for folk-tales; John -Syme’s taste ran more to satirical epigrams than to narrative poetry. -And these three represented the best intellectual companionship -Dumfries had to offer. As for Edinburgh, the influences dominating -the literary life of Scotland at the end of the century were better -represented by George Thomson than by Francis Grose. - -In September, 1792, Burns received a letter from a friend of Alexander -Cunningham’s, asking aid in a poetical and musical venture. George -Thomson, clerk to the Board of Trustees in Edinburgh, was two years the -poet’s senior and possessed all the elegance of taste which Burns’s -education had protected him from. Thomson enjoyed Scottish music in -his ultra-refined way, but was irked by the crudity of the traditional -songs. Baldly stated, his proposal was to collect a hundred of the best -Scottish melodies, to get a professional musician to dress them in -all the frills necessary for concert performance, and to provide them -with tidy English lyrics which would disguise their provincial origin. -In writing to Burns, however, he did not express himself so bluntly. -After explaining that Ignaz Joseph Pleyel, ‘the most agreeable composer -living’, had been engaged to arrange the music, he continued: - - ‘To render this work perfect, we are desirous to have the poetry - improved wherever it seems unworthy of the music; and that it is so, - in many instances, is allowed by everyone conversant with our musical - collections. The editors of these seem in general to have depended on - the music proving an excuse for the verses; and hence some charming - melodies are united to mere nonsense and doggerel, while others are - accompanied with rhymes so loose and indelicate as cannot be sung in - decent company. To remove this reproach would be an easy task to - the author of “The Cotter’s Saturday Night”.... It is superfluous to - assure you that I have no intention to displace any of the sterling - old Songs: those only will be removed which appear quite silly or - absolutely indecent....’ - -The publication, in short, was to be a sort of Golden Treasury of Scots -music, and Burns’s share in the work was to be ‘writing twenty or -twenty-five songs, suitable to the particular melodies’ which Thomson -selected. The editor said nothing, in this first letter, about his -preference for English words. - -No literary salesman ever received more enthusiastic response than -Thomson got from Burns. The poet promised whole-hearted co-operation, -but he had detected enough of Thomson’s temperament to make certain -reservations. In order of importance they were these. His share in -the work was to be a patriotic labour of love, and he would accept no -compensation. For the time being at least his participation was to be -anonymous--perhaps because he did not wish his official superiors to -think he was neglecting his Excise duties; perhaps because he feared -that Johnson might conclude that he was deserting the _Museum_. He was -not to be asked to compose unless he could do so spontaneously, and -Thomson was to have free editorial authority to take or reject his -contributions. Finally, ‘If you are for _English_ verses, there is, -on my part, an end of the matter.--Whether in the simplicity of _the -Ballad_, or the pathos of _the Song_, I can only hope to please myself -in being allowed at least a sprinkling of our native tongue.’ English -verses were precisely what Thomson _was_ for, ‘because the English -becomes every year more and more the language of Scotland,’ but he -hastened to disavow any wish to confine the poet to English--preferring -to wait and argue it out later, poem by poem. - -Greater enthusiasm, knowledge, and art were never enlisted under -more incompetent leadership than in Burns’s alliance with Thomson. -It did not take the poet long to discover that the elaborate plan -which Thomson had outlined in his first letters was really as vague -as an Edinburgh fog. The editor had not yet decided on the list of -airs he intended to include; he had not succeeded in getting the -co-operation of the English poetaster, John Wolcot (‘Peter Pindar’), -to write English songs; Pleyel, who was supposed to be handling the -music, soon departed on a visit to Germany and found his return route -to Britain closed by the armies of the French and the Allies. James -Beattie was to have been asked to furnish an introductory essay on -Scottish song, but Beattie was old and ill and not really interested in -the subject. In consequence of all this, Burns, who had begun on the -understanding that he was to furnish only a few lyrics, shortly found -himself saddled with the entire burden of the literary end of the work. -Even so his position, though laborious, would not have been difficult -had Thomson been merely muddle-headed. But as soon as the editor had -furnished the list of the twenty-five airs he meant to include in -the first number of his collection, and Burns had sent in his first -group of lyrics, Thomson revealed himself as a literary tinker. He was -constantly proposing amendments in phraseology--which always meant -substituting banal English expressions for racy Scots ones. At times -his niggling criticism was too much even for Burns’s enthusiasm and -good nature. One letter, for instance, began with the abrupt outburst, -‘That unlucky song “O poortith cauld,” &c. must stand as it stands--I -won’t put my hand to it again.’ In later years Thomson, to sustain his -pose as whole-hearted admirer of all Burns’s work, carefully inked -over that sentence in the manuscript. But he was guilty of worse than -that. Burns, as always, was steeping himself in the rhythms of the -airs to which he was composing; Thomson had to display his own musical -knowledge by suggesting that the proffered song be set to another tune. -The fact that to Burns the words and the tune were always inseparable -never penetrated his mind. - -Occasionally Burns came forward with a lyric written to an air not on -Thomson’s list, and at such times the editor’s taste and tact were most -fully displayed. For instance, Lady Elizabeth Heron, wife of Patrick -Heron, from whom Burns hoped for political favours, had composed a -little tune called ‘Banks of Cree’ and asked Burns to supply it with -words. Burns told the lady he would like her permission to publish the -song, and sent the words to Thomson, saying that ‘the air I fear is -not worth your while,’ but evidently hoping that Thomson would ask for -it. Thomson instead proposed setting the words to an air on his own -list, ‘Young Jockey was the blithest lad’. Burns replied sharply: ‘My -English song, “Here is the glen & here the bower” cannot go to this -air; it was written on purpose for an original air composed by Mrs. -Heron of Heron.’ But after the poet’s death Thomson erased the vetoing -phrase and published the words to the tune, ‘The Flowers of Edinburgh’, -thereby leaving Burns under the imputation of having lied to Lady -Elizabeth in promising to publish her music. - -Another time Burns found himself haunted by the old lilt of ‘Hey tutti -taitie’, which a wholly unreliable tradition declared to have been -Bruce’s march to Bannockburn. At the end of August, 1793, his impotent -fury over the Edinburgh sedition trials, combined with his enthusiasm -at the news of the French levy _en masse_ for the repulse of the Allied -invasion, found an outlet in composing ‘Scots wha hae’ to this air. -Historically the song is an anachronism. The ideas underlying it are -those of Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson and not of the feudal Middle -Ages; its very language is Scoticized English rather than the true -vernacular--Sir James Murray pointed out, for instance, that in real -Scots the opening phrase would be ‘Scots that has’. The song owes its -enduring popularity largely to the perfect union of the words with the -music they were composed to. But when Burns sent it to Thomson, that -worthy thought the music vulgar, and suggested that lengthening the -fourth line of each stanza would fit the words to another tune, ‘Lewis -Gordon’, which he liked better. This time Burns yielded, accepted -the silly changes, and thereafter circulated the song always in the -weakened version. Thomson published it in this form after the poet’s -death, but the appearance of the original version in Currie’s edition -showed the music-loving public the immense superiority of Burns’s -first thought. Thomson bowed to public opinion, and consigned his -‘improvements’ to the oblivion they deserved. - -In most instances, however, the public had no chance of checking up on -Thomson’s disregard of Burns’s wishes, and by destroying his own end -of the correspondence, after furnishing Dr. Currie with some carefully -edited extracts from it, the editor sought to cover up the extent of -his nagging criticisms. Inasmuch as his vandalism stopped short of -destroying Burns’s letters the ultimate publication of their complete -texts exposed the nature of his fault-finding almost as clearly as -if he had preserved his own originals. He nevertheless inked out a -number of passages in which Burns was too outspoken in comment on his -taste, or seemed to deny his claim to the copyright of the poet’s -contributions. Thomson was intensely jealous of Johnson’s _Museum_, -disliked Johnson personally, and resented Burns’s continuing to help -the rival work. Again and again in the letters Burns would say that if -a song did not suit, Thomson was to return it, and Burns would send it -to the _Museum_. To keep the material out of Johnson’s hands, Thomson -never definitely rejected anything. He carefully docketed the letter -in which Burns said that he had given Johnson no permanent copyright -in his songs, but inked over passages which indicated that Burns was -contributing to the _Select Collection_ on precisely the same terms as -to the _Museum_. - -When Burns’s health was failing in the spring of 1796 Thomson sought -to frighten him by a report that a pirated edition of the songs was -being planned, and enclosed for the poet’s signature a legal document -assigning him the whole copyright. Burns, ill though he was, and -careless as he had always been of his literary property, refused to -sign, and sent instead ‘a Certificate, which, though a little different -from Mr McKnight’s model, I suppose will amply answer the purpose,’ -adding that ‘when your Publication is finished, I intend publishing a -Collection, on a cheap plan, of all the songs I have written for you, -the Museum, &c.--at least of all the songs of which I wish to be called -the Author.’ This was tantamount to telling Thomson that he had a claim -on the first serial rights only, and though Thomson later published two -different texts of what he alleged was Burns’s deed of assignment, he -never produced the original holograph, and it was not preserved among -his papers. In after years Thomson tried the same trick on Sir Walter -Scott and Sir Alexander Boswell. He had succeeded in making Burns’s -executors believe that he owned the copyrights and was generously -waiving them for the benefit of the subscription edition, but Scott -and Boswell were lawyers and saw to it that where their own work was -concerned he got no more than the serial rights. - -Burns ought to have treated Thomson as Beethoven did in 1813, when -the editor demanded changes in the airs which the great musician had -undertaken to harmonize: - - ‘I regret that I am unable to oblige you. I am not accustomed to - tinker my compositions. I have never done so, being convinced - that every partial modification alters the whole character of the - composition. I am grieved that you are out of pocket through this, - but you cannot lay the blame on me, for it was your business to make - me more fully acquainted with the taste of your country and the - meagre abilities of your performers.’ - -But such blunt truth-telling was more than Burns was ever capable of to -a man who claimed taste and education. He said what he thought about -his songs, but said it gently and deferentially, and left them in -Thomson’s hand to be mangled or misapplied. - -To go into such detail of Thomson’s misdoings would be pointless had -he been merely a thick-headed and thick-skinned editor who failed to -appreciate what Burns was doing for him. But Thomson was much more than -that. He represented the whole Anglicizing tendency of the Scottish -gentry and bourgeoisie who were seeking to destroy the language and -individuality of their country. ‘Now let me declare off from your -taste.--“Toddlin hame” is a song that to my taste is an exquisite -production of genius.--That very Stanza you dislike - - “My kimmer & I lay down to sleep” - -is to me a piece of charming native humour.--What pleases me, as simple -& naive, disgusts you as ludicrous & low.--’ So said Burns in one of -the passages which Thomson tried to obliterate. But Thomson’s opinions -were shared by most of his educated countrymen, including some of -Burns’s most intimate friends. Where earlier criticism of the poet’s -vernacular work had failed to break down his Scotticism by the very -absurdity of such suggestions as imitating Virgil, Thomson tried to -accomplish it by the more insidious means of minor verbal changes which -individually seemed to amount to little but which in their cumulative -effect would emasculate the poetry. It is generally recognized that -Burns’s contributions to the _Select Collection_ include a much larger -percentage of the conventional and the commonplace than does his work -for the _Museum_; the marvel is that in the circumstances he achieved -so much that was not second-rate. He was composing to order, frequently -sending off by return of post the lines to a particular tune which -Thomson had asked for, and his efforts were constantly hampered by his -consciousness that certain themes and methods would never please the -silly editor’s taste. It was no wonder that many times he had to induce -a synthetic emotional thrill in himself--either by putting himself -through a course of admiration for a handsome woman, or by the help of -a bowl of punch--in order to be able to compose at all. - -His power of poetic response to music and emotion nevertheless did not -fail with his failing health. A few weeks before his death he asked -Jessie Lewars, sister of one of his best friends among the Excise -officers of Dumfries, to play him her favourite tune. She responded -with the roguish little air, ‘The robin cam to the wren’s nest, and -keekit in, and keekit in’. Burns, humming the tune to himself and -altering the tempo, produced almost extemporaneously the beautiful ‘O -wert thou in the cauld blast’. From his earliest lyric to his latest, -music was the catalyst which transformed emotion into poetry. Yet for -more than a century after his death the dominating influence of music -on his art went almost unrecognized; and George Thomson, the man who of -all others among Burns’s contemporaries had had the best opportunity -to realize the nature and the power of his lyric expression, wrote an -obituary which, besides inaugurating the legend of mental and moral -deterioration in the last years at Dumfries, summed up its author’s -appreciation of the wit, critical acumen, and real erudition of Burns’s -letters by saying that probably the poet ‘was not qualified to fill -a superior station’ to the humble one he held in the Excise. Of all -the Holy Willies who eyed Burns askance during his life and after his -death, he would probably, had he realized his true character, have -despised Thomson most. The others were merely trying to blacken Burns’s -own character. Thomson was trying to destroy the vitality of Scottish -song. - - - - -VII - -THE SCOT - - -Not merely in his struggle for livelihood and in the poetic art which -immortalized him was Burns a Scot of the Scots. He was equally so in -his religion, his politics, and, above all, his patriotism. Only in -this last was he untypical of his generation. Yet such statements are -misleadingly simple. All they can safely mean is that Burns, like -all men in all ages, was influenced in thought and conduct by the -environment in which he lived. Nevertheless, in a nation so small and -self-contained as Scotland in the eighteenth century the pressure -of environment was felt to a degree unrealized in larger and more -cosmopolitan communities. In England during Burns’s manhood the social -and literary worlds of Burke and Sheridan and Horace Walpole, of -Cowper, of John Wesley, of Godwin, of Blake, touched each other only -lightly and tangentially; in the rising generation of Wordsworth, Jane -Austen, Lamb, and Byron the separations would be even wider. Scotland -by comparison was all of a piece. Even her greatest philosophers, Adam -Smith and David Hume, even the much-travelled and Anglophile Boswell, -retained their national stamp. - -Though in their final form Burns’s religious ideas differed little, -if at all, from the sentimental ‘common sense’ deism of England and -France, the process by which he reached them was Scottish. The rigidity -of the doctrines to which he was subjected in his youth determined the -vigour of his reaction from them. As David Hume would scarcely have -been so militantly sceptical if he had been reared in a milder faith, -so Burns might have been less sentimental. His earliest teachings, it -is true, did not stress the more rigorous themes in Scottish Calvinism. -The preaching of Dr. William Dalrymple of Ayr, whose church the Burnes -family attended during the years at Alloway and Mount Oliphant, was -notably mild and gentle; William Burnes’s own little ‘Manual of -Religious Belief’, though it gave a reasonably orthodox definition of -the Fall of Man, was silent on such doctrinal points as predestination -and the Four-Fold State. Undoubtedly, therefore, the Old Light tenets -of Daddy Auld of Mauchline made a deeper impression on Burns’s -eighteen-year-old mind than they would have done had he been exposed -to them from infancy. Yet Burns had encountered _The Man of Feeling_ -before he left Mount Oliphant; the doctrines of sentiment and deism -were in the air he breathed; his emotional nature would have brought -him to them sooner or later, regardless of other stimuli. The most that -can be attributed to Auld is a little hastening and intensifying of the -process of revolt. - -Despite his constant citing of Young’s exhortation, ‘On Reason build -Resolve’, Burns’s approach to life and ideas was always emotional -and not intellectual. When he described himself in 1786 as having -little of divinity ‘except a pretty large portion of honour and an -enthusiastic, incoherent Benevolence,’ his self-analysis had his -customary accuracy. To him, as to the New England Unitarians and to a -man like Mark Twain, escape from the orthodoxy of his youth had come as -a relief and not as a loss. Calvinism had erected a system of thought -as rigidly deductive as the science of geometry. Starting from certain -‘self-evident’ axioms like the omnipotence and omniscience of God, -the fall of man, and the literal authority of the Scriptures, it had -created a religious philosophy from which all emotion except fear had -been removed. Through the sin of Adam all men had earned damnation, but -the inscrutable mercy or caprice of God would choose a remnant minority -for salvation--for His merit, not theirs. Human faith and human -righteousness were filthy rags. - -This cold determinism outraged Burns’s sense of fairness and justice, -as it outraged Channing’s and Emerson’s and Holmes’s. It seemed to him -that the New Lights were ‘squaring Religion by the rules of Common -Sense, and attempting to give a decent character to Almighty God and -a rational account of his proceedings with the Sons of Men.’ But in -investing their deity with human benevolence and loving-kindness, the -New Lights were also, again like the New England Unitarians, more or -less unwittingly surrendering the supernatural sanctions of religion -and assimilating their ideas to those of the Deists. God was the -‘Great First Cause, least understood’; Christ tended to sink from -Godhead to merely an inspired human teacher; personal immortality -became a pious hope instead of a divine promise. If man were indeed -immortal, the surest passport to salvation was righteous living rather -than adherence to a particular creed. And the guide to righteous living -was the still small voice of conscience, the Moral Sense which Francis -Hutcheson had taught was an innate human faculty. - -In his attitude towards these doctrines, Burns was a man of his century -and a Scot of his century. The rigidity of the Kirk, so unlike the -comfortable looseness of Anglican theology, left him no place within -its pale, even though he never openly severed his connexion. As a -youth he had, along with most of his countrymen, read popular works -of divinity like Boston’s _Four-Fold State_, Fisher’s _Marrow of -Modern Divinity_, and Cole _On God’s Sovereignty_. In 1791, when his -rural neighbours of the Monkland Friendly Society insisted on adding -these and other books to their co-operative library, Burns obediently -ordered them from Peter Hill, and lumped them all together as ‘damned -trash’. Though he told James Candlish in 1787 that after having ‘in -the pride of despising old women’s stories, ventured in “the daring -path Spinoza trod”; ... experience of the weakness, not the strength, -of human powers, made me glad to grasp at revealed religion,’ it was -not the revelation of the Kirk. Not even his infatuation for Clarinda, -though it made him momentarily qualify his admiration for Milton’s -Satan, could compel him to bow the knee to Calvin. ‘Mine’, he told her -when she undertook to preach orthodoxy to him, ‘is the Religion of the -bosom.--I hate the very idea of controversial divinity; as I firmly -believe, that every honest, upright man, of whatever sect, will be -accepted of the Deity.--If your verses, as you seem to hint, contain -censure, except you want an occasion to break with me, don’t send -them.... “Reverence thyself” is a sacred maxim, and I wish to cherish -it.’ - -His fullest statement approximating to orthodoxy was written to Mrs. -Dunlop in 1789: - - ‘I have just heard Mr Kirkpatrick preach a sermon. He is a man - famous for his benevolence, and I revere him; but from such ideas of - my Creator, good Lord, deliver me! Religion ... is surely a simple - business, as it equally concerns the ignorant and the learned, the - poor and the rich. That there is an incomprehensible Great Being, to - whom I owe my existence; and that He must be intimately acquainted - with the operations and progress of the internal machinery, and - consequent outward deportment, of this creature which He has made; - these are, I think self-evident propositions. That there is a real - and eternal distinction between virtue and vice, and, consequently, - that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming nature of - the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection, nay, - positive injustice, in the administration of affairs both in the - natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of - justice beyond the grave; must, I think, be allowed by every one who - will give himself a moment’s reflection. I will go farther, and - affirm, that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of His - doctrine and precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated wisdom and - learning of many preceding ages, though, _to appearance_, He Himself - was the obscurest and most illiterate of our species--therefore Jesus - Christ was from God....’ - -Another time he told the same lady, ‘We can no more live without -Religion, than we can live without air; but give me the Religion of -Sentiment & Reason.--You know John Hildebroad’s famous epitaph-- - - “Here lies poor old John Hildebroad, - Have mercy on his soul, Lord God, - As he would do, were he Lord God, - And thou wert poor John Hildebroad.”-- - -This speaks more to my heart, & has more of the genuine spirit of -Religion in it, than is to be found in whole wagon-loads of Divinity.’ -This was the same mood in which he had told Clarinda, ‘My creed is -pretty nearly expressed in the last clause of Jamie Deans’s grace, an -honest weaver in Ayrshire; “Lord, grant that we may lead a gude life! -for a gude life maks a gude end; at least it helps weel!”’ Reason and -Sentiment, but with the sentiment much more powerful than the reason, -these were the dominant forces in Burns’s religious attitude. - -Nevertheless Burns was more courageous than many of his contemporaries -in accepting the logical consequences of belief in universal -benevolence. No man knew more clearly the warfare between flesh and -spirit, but he was convinced that both were the gifts of God. The lines -which so shocked Wordsworth, - - ‘But yet the light that led astray - Was light from Heaven’, - -are his frankest summary of his experience. Whatever sufferings his -passions had brought upon him, the passions in themselves were noble. -Asceticism had no appeal for him. He took life as God made it, and saw -that it was good. - -Taken by themselves, his utterances to Clarinda and Mrs. Dunlop might -not be above suspicion. Burns had every motive for wishing favourably -to impress both women, and might have feigned an interest which he did -not feel, or at least have overstated his belief and understated his -doubts. But here, as in his feelings towards his children, what he -said when he may have been on dress-parade is confirmed by his letters -to his intimates. In 1788 he wrote to Robert Muir, then dying of -tuberculosis: - - ‘... An honest man has nothing to fear.--If we lie down in the grave, - the whole man a piece of broken machinery, to moulder with the clods - of the valley--be it so; at least there is an end of pain, care, - woes and wants: if that part of us called Mind, does survive the - apparent destruction of the man--away with old-wife prejudices and - tales!... A man, conscious of having acted an honest part among his - fellow-creatures; even granting that he may have been the sport, at - times, of passions and instincts; he goes to a great unknown Being - who could have no other end in giving him existence but to make him - happy; who gave him those passions and instincts, and well knows - their force.’ - -In the same tone he said six years later to Alexander Cunningham that -the two great pillars which bear us up, ‘amid the wreck of misfortune -and misery’, are the ‘certain noble, stubborn something ... known by -the names of courage, fortitude, magnanimity’ and ‘those feelings and -sentiments which, however the sceptic may deny them or the enthusiast -disfigure them, are yet, I am convinced, original and component parts -of the human soul; those _senses of the mind_ ... which connect us -with, and link us to, those awful obscure realities--an all-powerful -and equally beneficient God, and a world to come, beyond death and the -grave.’ - -The countryman of Francis Hutcheson could scarcely have indicated more -clearly his obligations to the Glasgow philosopher. Burns’s ‘senses of -the mind’ are merely Hutcheson’s Moral Sense a little expanded. Like -Channing and Emerson, having rejected the authority of the church, and -with it the supernatural sanctions of Christian doctrine, Burns fell -back on the authority of intuition to support concepts which he was -unwilling to abandon. The idea of the deity, and His relations with -mankind, which is embodied in these passages, he never deviated from; -what seemed to many of his readers shocking irreverence was aimed at -intolerance and hypocrisy, and not at religion. But he was not able in -all moods to convince himself of personal immortality. - -At times he tried to argue himself into belief: - - ‘The most cordial believers in a Future State have ever been the - Unfortunate.--This of itself; if God is Good, which is, I think, the - most intuitive truth in Nature, ... is a very strong proof of the - reality of its existence....’ - -and he went on to reason that since the ideas of ‘OUGHT, and OUGHT NOT’ -are ‘first principles or component parts of the Human Mind’ and are -synonymous in our thinking with virtue and vice, the soul _must_ be -immortal because, ‘except our Existence _here_, have a reference to an -Existence _hereafter_, Virtue & Vice are words without meaning.’ Thus -he argued to Mrs. Dunlop, who had just told him that her daughter, Mrs. -Henri, was widowed after a few months of marriage. But not long before -he had said to Cunningham, - - ‘All my fears & cares are of this world: if there is another, an - honest man has nothing to fear from it.--I hate a man that wishes to - be a Deist, but I fear, every fair, unprejudiced Enquirer must in - some degree be a Sceptic.--It is not that there are any very - staggering arguments against the Immortality of Man; but, that like - Electricity, Phlogiston, &c. the subject is so involved in darkness - that we want Data to go upon.--One thing frightens me much: that we - are to live forever, seems too good news to be true....’ - -An emotional man deprived of any authority except emotion on which he -could rely, Burns’s religious views are of a piece with his politics -and his patriotism. To get at the underlying emotions is to explain -what appear to be glaring contradictions in thought. John Ramsay of -Ochtertyre found Burns’s politics ‘abundantly motley’, for the poet -managed to combine strong sympathy for the exiled House of Stuart with -liberal if not republican views on contemporary affairs. To Ramsay -this seemed like being simultaneously Catholic and Protestant, whereas -it was only putting into words the unexpressed philosophy that had -swayed the popular mind of Scotland for close on a century. Burns -admired Lord Balmerino, noblest of the victims of the ’45; he also -admired John Wilkes. Between a devoted Jacobite like Balmerino and a -radical Whig like Wilkes, there was only one point in common: both were -anti-Hanoverian. That one point reconciles Burns’s divergent opinions. -The Stuarts embodied the ideal of Scotland as an independent nation; -even though from the accession of James to the death of Anne they had -governed Scotland from London they still commanded the loyalty of -their old kingdom. But the Georges were, as Burns said, ‘an obscure, -beef-witted, insolent race of foreigners whom a mere conjuncture -of circumstances kickt up into prominence and power.’ His phrase -summarizes in vigorous prose the spirit of the ribald satirical songs -by which Scotland had avenged herself for the humiliations following -the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. Burns was far from maintaining -that the Stuarts were perfect, or that the Revolution of 1688 lacked -justification; what he did maintain was that the Hanoverian system was -not perfect either. - -On the Fifth of November, 1788, Burns attended a special service -of thanksgiving held at Dunscore Kirk to celebrate the centenary -of the Revolution. The Rev. Mr. Kirkpatrick’s remarks about ‘the -bloody and tyrannical House of Stuart’ sent the poet home to write -an open letter to his friend David Ramsay, editor of the Edinburgh -_Evening Courant_, in which he mingled unveiled satire with a sense -of historical perspective hardly to be looked for in an ‘unlettered -ploughman’. He went to church, he said, to give thanks for ‘the -consequent blessings of the Glorious Revolution. To that auspicious -event we owe no less than our liberties religious and civil--to it we -are likewise indebted for the present Royal Family, the ruling features -of whose administration have ever been, mildness to the subject, and -tenderness of his rights.’ But, he continues, cannot we give thanks for -our present blessings ‘without, at the same time, cursing a few ruined -powerless exiles, who only harboured ideas, and made attempts, that -most of us would have done, had we been in their situation?’ ‘Were the -royal contemporaries of the Stuarts more mildly attentive to the rights -of man? Might not the epithets of “bloody and tyrannical” be with at -least equal justice, applied to the house of Tudor, of York, or any -other of their predecessors?’ In short, the Stuarts were only fighting -for prerogatives which former monarchs of England and contemporary -monarchs of France enjoyed unchallenged, and the poet disclaims ability -to determine whether their overthrow ‘was owing to the wisdom of -leading individuals, or to the justling of party.’ And then comes the -sting: - - ‘Man, Mr. Printer, is a strange, weak inconsistent being.--Who - would believe, Sir, that in this our Augustan age of liberality and - refinement, ... a certain people, under our national protection, - should complain, not against a Monarch and a few favourite advisers, - but against our whole legislative body, of the very same imposition - and oppression, the Romish religion not excepted, and almost in the - very same terms as our forefathers did against the family of Stuart! - I will not, I cannot, enter into the merits of the cause; but I dare - say, the American Congress, in 1776, will be allowed to have been as - able and enlightened, and, a whole empire will say, as honest, as the - English Convention in 1688; and that the fourth of July will be as - sacred to their posterity as the fifth of November is to us.’ - -The concluding sentence of that peroration is paraphrased from a speech -John Wilkes had delivered in the House of Commons ten years before. -Manifestly Burns followed, closely and sympathetically, the utterances -of the English radicals and reformers; it is well known that ‘A Man’s a -Man’ is ‘two or three pretty good prose thoughts inverted into rhyme’ -from the writings of a former Excise officer named Thomas Paine. Like -most European liberals, Burns admired the leaders of the American -Revolution--one of the toasts which gave offence in Dumfries is said -to have been his proposal of the health of George Washington as ‘a -better man’ than William Pitt--and his admiration would be intensified -by obvious parallels between the grievances of the Americans and the -Scots. His Jacobite sympathies were wholly emotional, and in part -conditioned by the fact that the Jacobites had written all the good -songs. One suspects that he would just as readily have taken the -Catholic view of the Reformation if Scottish Catholics had embalmed -their lost cause in poetry. When he looked at current affairs, his -reason backed his feelings. Politically, Scotland had almost as much -to complain of as the American colonies had had. In some respects, -indeed, she had more. American towns had been free to manage their -local affairs by a system of representative government; in Scotland the -municipalities, like the country’s representation in Parliament, were -self-perpetuating oligarchies. Burns, in common with thousands of men -of higher rank, had no vote even in the government of his own burgh. -Yet his dislike of the system and his contempt for most of its leaders -would probably have expressed itself only in occasional satires had it -not been for the outbreak of the French Revolution. - -A movement for reform of both burgh and parliamentary government -was under way in Scotland. George Dempster, one of the few men of -independent mind among the Scottish representatives at Westminster, -advocated such measures of reform as would allow ‘the industrious -farmer and manufacturer [to] share at least in a privilege now -engrossed by the great lord, the drunken laird, and the drunkener -baillie.’ Country gentlemen of unimpeachable character took up the -agitation, and Burns’s letters to men like William Robertson of Lude, -John Francis Erskine of Mar, and Richard Oswald of Auchencruive, show -that he looked to such leadership as the hope of the country. When his -conduct was under inquiry Burns declared that he had, as a government -employee, taken no active part, either personally or as an author, in -the movement for reform, but that as a man he ‘would say that there -existed a system of corruption between the Executive Power & the -Representative part of the Legislature, which boded no good to our -glorious Constitution; & which every patriotic Briton must wish to see -amended.’ - -The early stages of the French Revolution roused the enthusiasm of -the more liberal-minded men of all classes in Scotland. A dinner in -Edinburgh to celebrate the second anniversary of the fall of the -Bastille was attended by a group of university students which included -John Allen, stepson of the poet’s friend Robert Cleghorn, by numerous -country gentlemen like his friend Robert Riddell and his acquaintance -Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch, and by Lord Daer. It seemed to men -like Craigdarroch and Daer that the popular interest in the principles -of the Revolution might be harnessed for the benefit of Scotland in -speeding measures for burgh and parliamentary reform. Actually the -brief alliance with French sympathizers delayed reform for forty years. -All the vested interests of Great Britain rallied to support Burke’s -condemnation of the revolutionary principles, and the counter-attack -swept away every attempt to alter in the slightest degree the existing -scheme of things. - -The full weight of the counter-attack was not felt at once. Indeed, -it was a Scotsman, James Mackintosh, who published the fullest and -best-reasoned of the numerous replies to Burke. Besides seeking to -confute Burke, Mackintosh tried to rally his countrymen to the cause -of reform by citing their medieval reputation as lovers of liberty who -would die rather than surrender their freedom. Certain passages in -Mackintosh were probably as directly responsible for the composition of -‘Scots wha hae’ as _The Rights of Man_ was for ‘A Man’s a Man’. But as -the Revolution swept on with increasing bloodshed to the execution of -Louis XVI and as mobs in various parts of Scotland, including Edinburgh -itself, celebrated King George’s birthday by burning Henry Dundas in -effigy, the authorities became panicky. Scotland felt the heaviest -force of their fright. Long latent memories of the ’45 revived at -Whitehall, and to the dread of Scotland as a focal point for rebellion -was added the practical detail that repressive measures could be better -organized there than in England. England had a few constituencies, -like London and Westminster, in which enough people were enfranchised -to give a really popular vote, and a few members of Parliament whom -neither fear nor bribes could silence. Scotland had neither. Hence -the counter-revolutionary reign of terror struck first and hardest at -Scotland. - -Early in 1793 several leaders of the Friends of the People, a society -organized to agitate for parliamentary reform, were arrested on -charges of treason. Lord Daer was a member of the society, too, but -the authorities, doubtless afraid that not even a packed jury could be -trusted to convict the son of a popular earl, made no move to seize -him. They contented themselves with lesser, but still conspicuous, -victims, and before the series of trials--conducted with such disregard -of justice as in Henry Cockburn’s opinion had not been seen in Britain -since Jeffreys’s Bloody Assizes--was over Thomas Muir, Thomas Palmer, -and several other reform leaders had been condemned to long terms of -penal transportation. All opposition was crushed in Scotland for a -generation. Henry Erskine, the one man who dared to raise his voice in -defence of justice and common sense, paid for his temerity by being -voted out of his office as Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. One of -the last of Burns’s satirical ballads commemorates the event, in which -a young man just admitted to the bar, Walter Scott by name, voted -with the majority to punish Erskine for having the courage of his -convictions. - -Such was the background against which Burns undertook to display -himself as a Friend of the People. He never, so far as can be learned, -actually joined any of the reforming organizations, but it was not in -Burns’s nature to conceal his opinions. From the time when he appeared -in Edinburgh drawing-rooms wearing a waistcoat of Foxite blue and buff, -and inscribed on a window-pane at Stirling verses about the successors -to the Stuarts being ‘an idiot race, to honor lost’, he was marked as -a character who would bear watching. The wonder is not so much that he -came near to losing his job in the Excise as that he ever succeeded in -getting it. If William Corbet and Graham of Fintry had not been the -generous and friendly souls they were, the poet’s service career would -have ended in 1793, and he might even have shared the fate of Muir and -Palmer. - -To note some of Burns’s words and deeds during 1791 and 1792, and -realize that for every reckless phrase that reached paper there were -doubtless a score uttered over the punchbowl, is to marvel at the -poet’s escape. His phrase about the House of Hanover, already quoted, -was written in the privacy of Robert Riddell’s library, but it is hard -to believe that he did not say equally sharp things in more public -places. His most intimate friends in Dumfries were avowed sympathizers -with the Revolution. Dr. James Maxwell had witnessed the execution of -the king, cherished the handkerchief he had dipped in the royal blood, -and was well enough known to the authorities to have his revolutionary -connexions violently denounced by Burke on the floor of the House of -Commons. John Lewars was tainted with ‘D-m-cratic heresy’; Syme, after -enrolling, like Burns, in the Dumfries Volunteers, became heartily -disgusted with the whole wretched business; Maria Riddell was a parlour -revolutionist who on her visits to London associated ‘with a very -pleasant set of Sans-culottes’. Throughout 1792 Burns had let slip -few opportunities of proclaiming his own sympathies. In the spring he -bought the _Rosamond’s_ carronades and dispatched them as a present to -the French Convention; in the autumn, when Maria Riddell asked him to -suggest a programme for a benefit night in Dumfries theatre, he chose -from the repertory of the local company Mrs. Centlivre’s _The Wonder: -A Woman Keeps a Secret_ because it contained some platitudinous lines -about British liberty which could be given political significance by -well-timed applause. Either on this occasion or another the crowd -carried the matter further than Burns had anticipated. - -When ‘God Save the King’ was called for, a group in the pit which -included some of Burns’s friends shouted for ‘Ça Ira’ instead. The -ensuing clamour came to the verge of a free-for-all fight. In his -defence Burns avowed that he never opened his lips ‘to hiss, or huzza, -that, or any other Political tune whatever’ because he looked on -himself ‘as far too obscure a man to have any weight in quelling a -Riot; at the same time as a character of higher respectability, than -to yell in the howlings of a rabble.’ In other words, by sitting -still and not applauding the national anthem he made himself just -as conspicuous as if he had joined in the call for ‘Ça Ira’. He was -anything but the obscure individual he claimed to be, and it was -apparently his public conduct on this occasion that led to his being -reported to his superiors as a disaffected person. - -Seemingly the idea that his opinions might get him into trouble had -never occurred to Burns. The threat of an official investigation threw -him into a humiliating panic, and must also have alarmed his friends -in the higher ranks of the Excise. It is difficult otherwise to -account for Supervisor Corbet’s coming in person to Dumfries to look -into the charges. An accusation brought against a minor officer in -the service was scarcely in ordinary routine a serious enough affair -to call in one of the highest officials; the inference is that Corbet -was rightly fearful of the results if Burns were investigated by an -unfriendly agent. Accordingly the Supervisor examined the poet across -a dinner-table in company with Findlater and Syme, and in that mellow -atmosphere found no ground for the charges ‘save some witty sayings’. -But even so, Corbet, in the name of the Board, had to admonish -Burns--so the poet reported to Erskine of Mar--‘that _my_ business was -to _act_, not to think; & that whatever might be Men or Measures, it -was for me to be silent and obedient.’ - -The hair-splitting particularity of Burns’s defence of his conduct -is in itself proof of the real basis of the charges against him. He -revered the King, he declared, in his public capacity as ‘the sacred -Keystone of our Royal Arch Constitution’, but George’s ‘private worth, -it is altogether impossible that such a man as I can appreciate.’ (On -the report of the King’s first admitted insanity in 1788 he had said, -‘I am not sure whether he is not a gainer, by how much a Madman is a -more respectable character than a Fool.’) He had joined no party for -revolution or reform; his contributions to the radical _Edinburgh -Gazetteer_ had been only a couple of non-political verses. But he did -not mention that in subscribing to the _Gazetteer_ he had urged its -editor, William Johnston, to ‘lay bare, with undaunted heart & steady -hand, that horrid mass of corruption called Politics & State-Craft!’ -and to ‘dare to draw in their native colours these “Calm, thinking -Villains whom no faith can fix”--whatever be the Shibboleth of their -pretended Party.’ Oddly enough, the _Rosamond’s_ carronades had not -been brought up against him. Hence he naturally did not mention them, -but he took occasion to avow that though he had been an enthusiastic -votary of France at the beginning, he had changed his sentiments since -the Revolution had embarked on a career of bloodshed and military -aggression. - -Here Burns was making a Galileo recantation. On the same day on which -he thus denied to Robert Graham that he any longer supported the -Revolution he was using French in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop and adding -that he hoped it was correct, for ‘much would it go against my soul, -to mar anything belonging to that gallant people: though my real -sentiments of them shall be confined alone to my letters to you.’ -Despite her repeated warnings to drop the subject, he continued to talk -about his devotion to Liberty, his friendship with Dr. Maxwell, and his -approval of ‘the delivering over a perjured Blockhead & an unprincipled -Prostitute to the hands of the hangman’ until the offended lady broke -off the correspondence. Seething, as he had said of his feeling in -1788, with the impotent ‘madness of an enraged Scorpion shut up in a -thumb-phial’, Burns had to express himself to someone. He had lied -about his sentiments, and though the lie was to save his family rather -than himself, its taste was bitter in his mouth. Nor was he helped by -the realization that all Scotland was equally cowed and that if he had -not made his recantation he would have shared the fate of four other -citizens of Dumfries who were imprisoned for drinking seditious toasts. -Once before he had challenged authority in the shape of the temporal -power of the Kirk, and had come off not unscathed but undefeated. Now -he had challenged much less openly the State, and had learned the -difference in strength between a vital institution and a moribund one. -The realization of defeat shook his self-confidence as nothing else -had ever done, and helped to drive him to such unmanly conduct as that -which followed his quarrel with Maria Riddell. He who had refused to -sell his songs for money had sold his independence for bread. That it -was his children’s bread and not his own might salve his conscience, -but it could not heal his pride. - -The Man of Feeling had bruised himself against a harsher reality -than anything Harley had found in London or Bedlam; the idealist in -politics had learned the substance of which politicians are made. -Brimming with New Light theories about the Moral Sense, convinced by -primitivists like Rousseau that ‘mankind are by nature benevolent -creatures’ whom mere stress of hunger and poverty makes selfish, Burns -had come naked to battle against the forces of alarmed conservatism -and privilege. Like thousands of others he had taken seriously the -slogans of ‘Liberty’ and ‘the Rights of Man’, and had seen in the -French Revolution the signs that the world’s great age was beginning -anew. His disillusionment went deeper than mere realization of his own -unsafe position as a government employee. He was watching the ancient -forces of selfishness and aggression capture the movement from which he -had hoped so much. His enlistment in the Dumfries Volunteers was not -wholly from dread of further jeopardizing his livelihood by holding -aloof. He still believed in the principles of the Revolution, but that -belief did not commit him to endorsement of its practices, and so, like -many another pacifist, he found himself, still hating war, nevertheless -engaged in supporting it. - -Though he dared no longer give direct utterance to revolutionary -sympathies, he could, and did, express his detestation of war in -a song like ‘Logan Braes’, and couple the ideas of his generation -with the patriotic tradition of medieval Scotland. The low estate -of contemporary Scottish liberty threw into more glorious relief -the traditions of Bannockburn and the lost cause of the Stuarts. -His patriotism accepted without question the legend that ‘Hey tutti -taitie’ had been Bruce’s battle-march, as it accepted the romantic -interpretation of Mary Queen of Scots. Burns might call himself an -unprejudiced inquirer and a sceptic, but his nature had no kinship -with the cool remorseless scepticism of a man like David Hume. Hume’s -was the keenest Scottish mind of his century; Burns, at least in the -height of his rebellion against the Kirk, might have been expected to -find the philosopher congenial. But Burns could endure destructive -criticism only of things he hated. Hume did not confine his scepticism -to religion, and when he brought his devastating intellect to bear on -the romantic traditions of his country Burns turned away in anger. He -might endorse Hume’s demolition of the supernatural sanctions of the -church, but he was disquieted by the application of the same scepticism -to the belief in immortality, and infuriated when it was turned upon -Queen Mary. Hume was mentally akin to Voltaire and Samuel Butler; Burns -to Rousseau and Dickens. - -In repudiating Hume’s treatment of Mary, Burns was unconsciously -illustrating the force of Johnson’s ruthless dictum, which even the -loyal Sir Walter Scott could not wholly deny, that ‘a Scotchman must be -a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth: -He will always love it better than inquiry; and if falsehood flatters -his vanity, will not be very diligent to detect it.’ Few men have -lived more honest than Burns. He would not willingly lie, nor endorse -a lie; but if offered choice between a romantic story which appealed -to his patriotism and an unromantic one which did not, his choice was -never in doubt. His own followers, in their hostility to anything like -dispassionate investigation of the picturesque legends surrounding -him, continue to illustrate the same attitude. Nor, indeed, have the -Burnsians monopolized this aversion to inquiry. It remained for an -Irishman and an American to set forth the true details of the life of -Allan Ramsay, and for another American to write the only complete and -scholarly study of Henry Mackenzie and his times. - -Many Scotsmen besides Burns shared his passionate defence of Queen -Mary; not so many shared his general patriotism. Here Burns, very -Scot of very Scot, belonged to a generation which had passed, though -he prepared the way for one to come. He had much in common with -Claverhouse, Lochiel, or Fletcher of Saltoun; nothing in common with -Bute, Wedderburn, or Henry Dundas. In so far as the patriotism of Sir -John Sinclair sought the improvement of his country by collecting -and tabulating her resources, Burns was with him, but when Sinclair -tried to eradicate the national speech he struck at something Burns -held precious. True, Burns was like his contemporaries in snatching -at everything that seemed like proof that the Scots could equal or -surpass the English at their own games. He applauded the _Mirror_ -and the _Lounger_ because they looked like successful rivals of the -_Tatler_ and _Spectator_; he admired Thomson and Beattie and Blair the -more because even the English had to admit that these men wrote well -in the southern tongue. But he deeply resented the willingness of his -countrymen to sink their national identity in the Union. - - ‘Alas! have I often said to myself,’ he wrote to Mrs. Dunlop in 1790, - ‘what are all the boasted advantages which my country reaps from the - union, that can counterbalance the annihilation of her Independance, - and even her very name! I often repeat that couplet of my favorite - poet, Goldsmith-- - - “----States of native liberty possest, - Tho’ very poor, may yet be very blest.” - - Nothing can reconcile me to the common terms, “English ambassador, - English court,” &c. And I am out of all patience to see that - equivocal character, Hastings, impeached by “the Commons of England.” - Tell me, my friend, is this weak prejudice?’ - -Men like Boswell and Sinclair would have answered without hesitation -that it was. The Union had admitted Scotland to as much share as she -could grasp of the wealth of the British Empire; commerce and industry -were increasing year by year; the poor relation was beginning to live -like the prosperous branch of the family. For such profits, the change -of name from ‘Scotland’ to ‘North Britain’ seemed a small price. To -those who shared in the new prosperity, the suggestion of a nationalist -movement would have seemed rank folly or even downright treason. So -long as the prosperity continued, indeed, the ‘practical men’ had the -overwhelming majority of their countrymen with them. The emergence of -Scottish nationalism as a political force to be reckoned with had to -await the collapse of Scottish industry which followed the World War. -With the loss of material prosperity, the Scots have begun to question -the value of the system which transfers to Westminster the control of -their local affairs. Scottish poverty and Scottish pride are seemingly -interdependent. Removal of the one will make the nation more willing to -swallow the other. - -Even if Burns had shared the material prosperity resulting from the -Union, instead of helping, as tenant of rack-rented land, to pay for -it, his feelings would have been the same. In every fibre of his -being he shared the spirit of those Scots who, in contradiction of -every proverbial association of pawky caution with their race, have -been among the greatest soldiers, explorers, and idealists of modern -history. Montrose and Livingstone, Admiral Duncan and Mungo Park, -expressed in action the national traits which he expressed in song. His -calling, consciously accepted, was that of national poet; his other -activities merely the ‘sweat, that the base machine might have its -oil’. He refused payment for his songs, because the task of supplying -words to national melodies was a patriotic service, embalming and -treasuring up these relics of his country’s spirit to a life beyond -life. - -Without Burns’s share in the work of gathering old Jacobite songs, -for instance, and composing new ones, it may be questioned if such a -halo of romance would have surrounded, in the next generation, the -Rebellions of 1715 and 1745; without that halo, Sir Walter Scott would -have been less readily attracted to them; without Sir Walter, the -romantic vision of Scottish history would never have conquered the -world. No Scottish writer of the eighteenth century, except Burns, -passed on the torch of national pride. Without him, the fact that Hume -and Boswell were Scotsmen, that Thomson was born on Tweed instead of -Thames, would mean no more to the ordinary reader than does the fact -that Swift was born in Ireland or Wordsworth in Cumberland. Without -him, Ramsay and Fergusson would be forgotten minor poets who wrote in -a difficult and obsolete dialect. He gathered together in his own work -all that was vital in the work of his predecessors, infused it with the -fire of his own personality, and sent it out again to keep Scotland -alive. - -Burns came at the last moment when a national poet could succeed in -his task. A few decades later, and the vernacular would have sunk too -low for preservation. Even as it was, he could only embalm it and -not renew it as poetic speech. Except for Lady Nairne’s, scarcely -any vernacular poetry written in Scotland since 1800 deserves higher -ranking than the _Barrack-Room Ballads_. As a poetic influence, Burns’s -work was weak. As a national influence, its force is not yet spent. He -revealed the richness and colour of Scottish life, and in revealing it -gave direction and vitality to the long and noble line of novelists -which began with Sir Walter Scott and John Galt, and continued through -Stevenson to John Buchan and the late Neil Munro. Through these men -the Scotland which was no longer, politically, a nation became more -enduring than anything which depends on rulers and boundaries--a -nation of the mind and heart, a home of lost causes, of impossible -loyalties, of high romance and simple faith. It is not Scott’s kings -and ladies and nobles who keep his books alive; it is people like -Edie Ochiltree, Jeanie Deans, Meg Dods, and Dandie Dinmont--in other -words, the characters who are part and parcel of the world which Burns -depicted and glorified. Steenie Steenson, like Thrawn Janet and Tod -Lapraik, carries on the great tradition of Tam o’ Shanter. Without -Burns the Scottish novel as we know it would never have been; without -the Scottish novel, the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth -centuries would be as much the poorer as seventeenth-century poetry -would be without the Cavaliers. - -In tracing the continuing tradition of sentiment from Henry Mackenzie -through Burns himself to ‘Ian Maclaren’ and Sir James Barrie, Professor -Thompson made perforce a grave omission. The difference between -the dynamic romanticism of England at the beginning of the last -century--the romanticism of the young Wordsworth and of Shelley--and -the insipid prettiness of the same movement in America at the same -time, lies in the invigorating power of the French Revolution. By -giving a fighting edge to romance, the Revolution raised it above mere -fancifulness and sentimentality. His patriotism did the same thing -for the influence of Burns. Without it he might today be only a minor -Man of Feeling. Even as it is, he is neglected and misunderstood. The -strength, the humour, the fighting edge are there, but few people care -to find them. - -He saved Scotland; himself he could not save. Five years after -his death a group of admirers in Greenock organized a Burns Club, -and Paisley and Kilmarnock quickly followed suit. The fashion -spread through Scotland, and among Scotsmen in the rest of the -English-speaking world, bringing in its train the erection of more, and -worse, statues and monuments than have been reared to the memory of any -other British individual with the possible exception of Albert, Prince -Consort. Soon the movement acquired the characteristics of a minor -religious cult, complete with ritual meals and a thriving traffic in -relics, genuine or spurious, of its hero. - -In itself this establishment as hero of a national cult might be -harmless. After all, if any writer was to fill the role, Burns was -the inevitable candidate, for he alone of the great Scottish writers -was truly a man of the people. Not the existence of the cult, but -the direction it took, is the tragedy of Burns. The sentimentality -which lies, like the soft core of an over-ripe pear, at the heart of -writers like ‘Ian Maclaren’, Sir James Barrie, and A. A. Milne, is -widespread in Scotland. In the Burns cult this softness yearns to the -answering softness of ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’, ‘To a Mouse’, and -‘To a Mountain Daisy’, extols its hero as the Bard of Humanity and -Democracy, and rejoices in the bathos of Clarinda and Highland Mary. -Meanwhile the ribald magnificence of ‘Holy Willie’ and ‘The Jolly -Beggars’ is neglected, the homely realism of satires, epistles, and -dramatic monologues goes unread. Worst of all, the splendid treasury of -more than three hundred songs, Burns’s most truly patriotic work, lies -almost untouched on the shelves. Radio and concert stage alike ignore -them. And choice of the few that are known to the public at large runs -true to the same form as with the longer poems. Probably a hundred -people know ‘Sweet Afton’ for one who knows ‘M’Pherson’s Farewell’ or -‘Rantin’ Rovin’ Robin’. - -The flattery of being a national hero would delight Burns. If his -followers were only mealy-mouthed where he was outspoken, they would -merely amuse him. He would not mind if they slobbered over his sins, -for the unco guid were old acquaintance of his. But at the thought of -his worshippers exalting his weakest work and ignoring his best, his -very soul would scunner. The real Burns was not the dropper of tears -over ploughed-under weeds but the man who brought in the neighbours -for a kirn-night and kissed the lasses after every dance; the man who -sat by farmers’ ingles and on ale-house benches listening to the racy -earthy talk of his people and storing his mind with folk sayings and -old songs. He was not ashamed of being a Scottish peasant, the heir -of all the picturesque and frequently bawdy tradition of Scots folk -literature. Neither was the man who wrote, ‘But yet the light that led -astray Was light from Heaven’, ashamed of his human nature. But his -worshippers are ashamed of the best part of his nature and his work. -And nobody else reads him at all. - - - - -INDEX - - - Abbotsford, 227 - - _Aberdeen Almanac_, 45 - - Aberfoyle, 47 - - Adam, Alexander, 119 - - Addison, Joseph, 40, 234 - - _Adventures of John Cheap the Chapman, The_, 46 - - _Adventures of Telemachus_ (Fénelon), 51 - - ‘Ae fond kiss,’ 149, 172, 264 - - Agriculture in Scotland, 10-16, 188 - - Agriculture, Professorship of, Edinburgh, 155 - - Aiken, Robert, 93-96, 98, 142, 144, 147, 193, 194 - - Ainslie, Robert, 65, 107, 110, 112-115, 144, 150, 151, 167, 168, 170, - 173, 186, 214 - - Albert, Prince Consort, 306 - - Allen, John, 110, 291 - - Alloway, 11, 36-41, 48, 279 - - Alloway Kirk, 36, 266 - - Almack, William, 30 - - ‘A Man’s a Man,’ 289, 292 - - American Colonies. _See_ United States - - American Revolution, 70, 82, 225, 290 - - Anderson, Robert, 196, 247 - - Anne, Queen, 60, 287 - - ‘An’ O for ane-and-twenty, Tam,’ 264 - - Antigua, 176 - - Arbroath, 266 - - Archers, Royal Company of, 108 - - Argyll, John, Duke of, 5 - - Armour, James, 77, 94, 139, 142-143, 150, 165, 192 - - Armour, Mrs. James, 168 - - Armour, Jean. _See_ Burns, Jean Armour - - Army, Burns’s opinions of, 155, 179 - - Arnot, John, 191 - - Arran, 47 - - Athole, Jane Cathcart, Duchess of, 116-117 - - Athole, John, Duke of, 116-117 - - Auchencruive, 144 - - Auld Brig, Ayr, 31 - - _Auld Farmer’s New Year’s Morning Salutation, The_, 58, 249, 250 - - _Auld Lang Syne_, 260 - - Auld, Walter, 120, 228 - - Auld, William, 173, 279 - - Austen, Jane, 278 - - Aylmer, Rose, 250 - - Ayr, 195, 279 - - Ayr, Brigs of, 31 - - Ayr, Presbytery of, 92-93 - - - Baker, --, 127 - - Ballads, 25-27, 38, 43-44, 246, 252, 259, 269 - - Ballantine, John, 61, 93-96, 202 - - Ballenden, Braes of, 256 - - Balmerino, Arthur Elphinstone, Baron, 229, 287 - - _Banks of Cree_, 271 - - Bannockburn, 48, 272, 300 - - Barncailzie, 125 - - _Barrack-Room Ballads_, 305 - - Barrie, Sir James Matthew, 305, 307 - - Bayard, 28 - - Beattie, James, 25, 29, 75, 104, 270, 302 - - Bede, 23 - - Beethoven, Ludwig von, 275 - - Begbie, Alison, 69-70, 189 - - Begg, Isabella Burns, 147 - - _Bell_, West-Indiaman, 192-193 - - Benson, Anna Dorothea, 132 - - Beugo, John, 175 - - Bible, 23 - - Black Bull Inn, Glasgow, 166 - - Blacklock, Thomas, 99, 195 - - Blair, Athole, 116-117, 207 - - Blair, Hugh, 29, 97, 104, 118, 155, 195, 244, 302 - - Blair, Sir James Hunter, 240 - - Blair, Robert, 259 - - Blake, William, 243, 278 - - Bloody Assizes, 293 - - Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, 60 - - _Bonnie Dundee_, 261-262 - - Border tour, Burns’s, 113, 200, 208, 240, 247, 255 - - Boston, Thomas, 19, 37, 281 - - Boswell, Sir Alexander, 274 - - Boswell, Euphemia, 165 - - Boswell, James, 11, 29, 60, 91, 103, 107, 111, 129, 278, 302, 304 - - Boyd, Thomas, 120, 213 - - Brawne, Fanny, 250 - - Braxfield, Robert M’Queen, Lord, 102, 108, 129 - - Bremner, Robert, 242 - - _Brigs of Ayr, The_, 248 - - Broadsides, Scottish, 45 - - Brontë, Emily, 162 - - Brown, Richard, 80-83, 84, 89, 92, 137-138, 163, 166, 169, 237 - - Brown, Samuel, 56 - - Browning, Robert, 250, 251 - - Brow Well, 133, 184-187 - - Bruce, King Robert the, 272, 300 - - Brussels, 32 - - Buchan, David Stuart Erskine, Earl of, 100-101, 255 - - Buchan, John, 305 - - Burke, Edmund, 278, 292, 295 - - Burn, Robert, 221 - - Burnes, Agnes Broun (mother of the poet), 37-38, 44, 90, 135-136, - 138-139, 203 - - Burnes, Robert (grandfather of the poet), 36 - - Burnes, Robert (uncle of the poet), 36, 60 - - Burnes, William (father of the poet), 8, 34, 35, 36-39, 41, 42-43, 48, - 49-50, 55, 59, 62, 70, 71-73, 84, 85-88, 90, 279 - - Burness, James, 117, 232 - - Burnet, Elizabeth, of Manboddo, 240 - - Burns, Agnes (sister of the poet), 49 - - Burns, Elizabeth Paton (daughter of the poet), 74, 138-139, 143, 150, - 203 - - Burns, Elizabeth Riddell (daughter of the poet), 183-184 - - Burns, Gilbert (brother of the poet), 11, 34, 37, 41, 48, 50, 55, 59, - 63, 68, 73, 87, 88, 90, 95, 122, 138, 143, 186, 202-203, 208, 214, - 220, 245 - - Burns, Isabella (sister of the poet). _See_ Begg, Isabella Burns - - Burns, Jean Armour, 13, 83, 90, 91-92, 109, 110, 113, 114-115, 118, - 126, 133, 136, 138, 139-144, 146-148, 150, 153, 156, 164, 165, - 167-170, 172-176, 185, 187, 189, 192-193, 201, 212, 214, 217, 220, - 221, 232, 233 - - Burns, John (brother of the poet), 88 - - Burns, Robert, _Poems_. See _Poems_, Burns’s - - Burns, Robert, the poet, _passim_. Specific references are to be found - in association with other persons, topics, or places. - - Burns, Robert (son of the poet), 167, 174, 185 - - Burns, William (brother of the poet), 166, 203-204, 215 - - Burns, William Nicol (son of the poet), 119 - - Burns Clubs, 301, 306-308 - - Burton, Robert, 42 - - _Bush aboon Traquair, The_, 48, 255 - - Bute, John Stuart, Earl of, 5, 301 - - Butler, Samuel, 300 - - Byron, George Noel Gordon, Lord, 109, 278 - - - Cadell and Davies, 199 - - Caedmon, 23 - - _Ça Ira_, 295-296 - - Caledonian Hunt, 99, 127, 197 - - _Caller Oysters_, 248 - - Calton Hill, 118 - - Calvin, John, 19 - - Calvinism, 5, 16-23, 66, 162, 163, 279-287 - - Cameron, Meg, 113, 118, 148, 151, 152, 165, 208 - - Campbell, Mary, 138, 144-149, 250, 307 - - Canada, 190 - - Candlish, James, 30, 62, 281 - - Cape Club, Edinburgh, 105 - - Caroline lyrics, 42 - - Carronades, Burns’s purchase of, 227, 295, 297 - - Carswell, Catherine, 84, 180 - - Catalan, 23 - - Catrine House, 96-97, 195 - - Cawdor Castle, 48 - - Centlivre, Susannah, 295 - - Chalmers, Margaret, 148, 160-161, 164, 256 - - Channing, William Eilery, 280, 285 - - Chapbooks, Scottish, 45-46 - - Chapman, George, 49, 75 - - Chatterton, Thomas, 62, 79 - - Chaucer, Geoffrey, 23, 42, 46 - - Chesterton, G. K., 66 - - Children, Burns’s feelings toward, 150-153 - - Chloris. _See_ Lorimer, Jean. - - _Christabel_, 243 - - _Chronicle_, London, 134, 206 - - Clarinda. _See_ M’Lehose, Agnes. - - Clarke, Samuel, 128 - - Clarke, Stephen, 257-258 - - Class-consciousness, Burns’s, 52-53 - - Claverhouse, John Graham of, Viscount Dundee, 301 - - Cleghorn, Robert, 109-111, 253, 291 - - Clint, Henry, 120 - - Clochnahill, 36 - - Clow, Jenny, 113, 118, 144, 146, 148, 152, 165, 170-171, 221 - - Clydesdale, 50 - - Cockburn, Alison, 43 - - Cockburn, Henry, 103, 108, 293 - - Cockney dialect, 30, 247 - - Coila, 157 - - Cole, Elisha, 281 - - Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 243 - - _Comical Sayings of Paddy from Cork, The_, 46 - - ‘Coming thro’ the rye,’ 26 - - Commonplace Book, Burns’s, 236-239, 242-244, 259 - - Composition, Burns’s methods of, 241-246 - - Connaught, 81 - - Constable, Archibald, 106 - - Copyrights, Burns’s, 199-201, 274 - - Corbet, William, 129, 294, 296 - - Corri, Domenico, 28 - - _Cotter’s Saturday Night, The_, 58, 154, 246, 269, 307 - - _Court of Equity, The_, 111, 146 - - Court of Session, 86 - - Cowper, William, 278 - - Craig, Lord, 162, 165 - - Craigdarroch, 121 - - Crane, Ichabod, 39 - - Creech, William, 100, 105, 106, 161, 165, 169, 197-201, 204-205, 220 - - Criffel, 187 - - Crochallan Fencibles, 104-109, 253, 254, 255 - - Cromek, Robert Hartley, 161 - - Cullen, William, 155 - - Cunningham, Alexander, 107-109, 110, 112, 118, 125, 126, 133-134, 167, - 205, 240, 253, 268, 285, 286 - - Currie, James, 125, 182, 246, 273 - - ‘Cutty stool,’ 17 - - - Daer, Basil William, Lord, 96, 131, 291, 293 - - _Daft Days, The_, 25, 248 - - Dalrymple, 51 - - Dalrymple, William, 279 - - Dalswinton, 114, 207-212 - - Dalyell, Sir John Graham, 124 - - Dalziel, Alexander, 98, 99, 195 - - Darien Expedition, 7 - - Davidson, Betty, 44, 136 - - Davies, Deborah Duff, 149 - - Deans, Jamie, 283 - - Deans, Jeanie, 305 - - _Death and Dr. Hornbook_, 39, 46, 83 - - Death, Burns’s, 133 - - Deists, 20, 22, 281, 286 - - Democracy, Scottish, 32-33 - - Dempster, George, 32, 290 - - Dickens, Charles, 65, 266, 300 - - Dinmont, Dandie, 305 - - Dods, --, 127-128 - - Dods, Meg, 305 - - Don, Lady Harriet, 61, 132 - - Doonholm, 36 - - Douglas and Heron Bank, 16, 70, 85, 230 - - Douglas, Charles, 192 - - Douglas, Gawain, 23, 247 - - Douglas, Lady Mary, 132 - - _Douglas, Tragedy of_, 21, 40 - - Douglas, William, 250 - - Dover, 227 - - Drama, Burns and the, 251-252 - - Drama, in Edinburgh, 21 - - Dramatic lyric, Burns’s use of, 250-251 - - Dramatic monologue, Burns’s use of, 250-251 - - Drummond, William, of Hawthornden, 23 - - Dryden, John, 42 - - Dumfries, 68, 110, 113, 118, 124-134, 152, 160, 171, 177, 208, 219, - 221-233, 267, 294-297, 298 - - Dumfries Academy, 224 - - Dumfries Burgh Council, 224 - - Dumfries Public Library, 106 - - Dumfries Theatre, 179, 295-296 - - Dumfries Volunteers, 228, 231, 232, 295, 299 - - Dunbar, William (the poet), 23, 247 - - Dunbar, William (Edinburgh), 106, 157, 254 - - Duncan, Adam, 303 - - Dundas, Henry, 5, 101, 108, 116, 207, 292, 301 - - Dundas, Robert, 107, 108 - - Dunlop, Andrew, 82 - - Dunlop, Frances Anna Wallace, 61, 96, 101, 148, 150, 151, 152, - 153-160, 167, 194, 199, 206, 209, 240, 260, 267, 282-283, 284, 286, - 297-298, 302 - - Dunlop House, 156, 167 - - Dunlop, Keith, 157, 167 - - Dunlop, Rachel, 156, 167 - - Dunlop, Thomas, 154 - - Dunnottar, 36 - - Dunscore, 288 - - Dunse, 112, 113 - - Durham, 127 - - - East India Company, 6, 190 - - East Lothian, 208 - - Easy Club, Edinburgh, 105 - - Eclogues, Virgil’s, 252 - - Edinburgh, 7-10, 75, 78, 94, 99-119, 124, 153, 162-172, 195-202, - 209-210, 216, 221, 245, 252, 291-293, 294 - - Edinburgh High School, 116, 119 - - Edinburgh University, 8, 96 - - Eglinton, Archibald Montgomerie, Earl of, 197, 202 - - Eglinton, Countess of, 197 - - Eglinton Wood, 82 - - _Elegies_ (Shenstone), 57 - - _Elegy on the Death of Sir James Hunter Blair_, 240 - - _Elibanks and Elibraes_, 48, 255 - - Elizabethan lyrics, 42 - - Elliot, Jean, 43 - - Ellisland, 101, 110, 113-115, 119-122, 158, 174, 202, 203, 207-222, - 262 - - Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 261, 280, 285 - - _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 105 - - _Epistle to John Rankine_, 77 - - Erskine, Andrew, 91, 99 - - Erskine, Henry, 108, 293 - - Erskine, John Francis, of Mar, 291, 297 - - _Esopus to Maria_, 181 - - _Evening Courant_, Edinburgh, 288 - - _Eve of St. Agnes, The_, 250 - - Excise, 55, 98, 101, 109, 115, 116, 129-130, 133, 165, 169, 170, 190, - 206-207, 209-210, 212, 214-233, 262, 269, 277, 289, 294, 296 - - - Faculty of Advocates, 293 - - Falstaff, 167 - - Farington, Joseph, 121, 165 - - Farming, Burns’s, 204, 210-222 - - Fénelon, François, 51 - - _Ferdinand Count Fathom_, 58 - - Fergusson, Alexander, of Craigdarroch, 121-122, 291 - - Fergusson, Robert, 25, 61, 75, 91, 104, 105, 134, 221, 237, 241-242, - 247-248, 252, 304 - - Fergusson, William, 36, 50, 53 - - Ferrara, Duke of, 250 - - Fifeshire, 247 - - ’Fifteen, Rebellion of, 36, 287, 304 - - Findlater, Alexander, 96, 129-130, 217, 219, 229, 296 - - Fisher, Edward, 281 - - Flax-dressing, Burns and, 71, 79-84 - - Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun, 301 - - _Flowers of Edinburgh, The_, 272 - - _Flowers of the Forest, The_, 43 - - Folk-songs, Scottish, 26-28, 38, 43-44, 75, 132, 252-263, 269 - - Fornicators’ Court, 112 - - ’Forty-five, Rebellion of, 4, 7, 26, 46, 287, 292, 304 - - _Four-Fold State_ (Thomas Boston), 19, 37, 279, 281 - - Fox, Charles James, 294 - - Franklin, Benjamin, 22, 61, 100, 103, 266 - - Freemasonry, 67-68, 87, 99, 104, 144, 145, 297 - - French, Burns’s knowledge of, 51-52 - - French Convention, 227, 295 - - French Revolution, 51, 119, 128, 159-160, 182, 226-228, 270, 272, - 290-299, 306 - - Friars Carse, 120, 176, 177, 181, 182, 212, 265 - - _Friars Carse Hermitage, Written in_, 262 - - Friends of the People, 293-294 - - - _Gala Water_, 255 - - Galileo, 297 - - Galloway, Burns’s tour in, 229 - - Galloway, John Stewart, Earl of, 131 - - Galt, John, 305 - - _Gazetteer_, Edinburgh, 297 - - _Gentlemen’s Magazine_, 31 - - George III, 292, 296-297 - - _Geographical Grammar_ (Guthrie), 48 - - _Gillicrankie_, 237 - - Glasgow, 7, 83, 166 - - Glasgow University, 20, 30 - - Glenbervie, 36 - - Glencairn, Elizabeth M’Quire, Countess of, 132 - - Glencairn, James, Earl of, 95, 98-101, 107, 120, 195-197, 209, 210, - 216, 240 - - Glenconner, 211 - - Globe Inn, Dumfries, 120, 174 - - _God Save the King_, 295-296 - - Godwin, William, 278 - - Goldielea, 122, 178 - - Goldsmith, Oliver, 31, 302 - - Gordon Castle, 117 - - Gordon, Jane, Duchess of, 117, 132, 159 - - Gow, Neil, 27 - - Graham, Dugal, 11, 45-46 - - Graham, Robert, of Fintry, 68, 111, 116, 207, 216, 223, 224, 294, 297 - - _Grave, The_ (Blair), 259 - - Gray, James, 124, 152 - - Gray, Thomas, 103, 157 - - Greenfield, William, 252 - - Greenock, 192-193, 306 - - Grieve, James, 85 - - _Grizzel Grimme, Ballad of_, 246 - - Grose, Francis, 121, 176-177, 265, 268 - - Guthrie, William, 48 - - _Guy Mannering_, 104 - - - Halleaths, 182 - - _Hallowe’en_, 248 - - Hamilton, Charlotte, 256 - - Hamilton, Gavin, 72, 76, 78, 87-88, 90, 92-93, 142, 202 - - Hamilton, John, of Sundrum, 85-86 - - Hamilton, William, of Gilbertfield, 24, 45 - - _Hamlet_, 40 - - Hampstead Heath, 244 - - _Handsome Nell_, 236, 242 - - Hannibal, 45, 234 - - Hanover, House of, 4, 26, 287-289, 294 - - _Hardyknute_, 27, 43 - - Harry, Blind, 25, 45 - - Hastings, Warren, 5, 302 - - Hay, Charles (Lord Newton), 106-107, 108, 253 - - Hay, Lewis, 161 - - Health, Burns’s, 54, 83-84, 184-187, 217, 231-233 - - _Helenore_ (Alexander Ross), 24 - - Henley, William Ernest, 138, 144, 145, 168 - - Henri, Susan Dunlop, 152, 286 - - _Henry VIII_, 40 - - Henryson, Robert, 23 - - Herald’s Office, Edinburgh, 35 - - Herd, David, 27, 43, 110, 252 - - ‘Here is the glen and here the bower,’ 272 - - Heron, Lady Elizabeth, 271-272 - - Heron, Patrick, of Heron, 16, 131, 230, 271 - - _Hey, Johnie Cope_, 26 - - _Hey tutti taitie_, 272, 300 - - Highland clans, suppression of, 4 - - _Highland Lassie_, 145 - - Highland Mary. _See_ Campbell, Mary - - Highland tours, Burns’s, 116-118, 256 - - Hildebroad, John, 283 - - Hill, Peter, 106, 200, 281 - - _History of Sir William Wallace, The_, 234 - - _History of the Bible_ (Stackhouse), 48 - - Hogg, James, 102, 135 - - Holinshed, Raphael, 261 - - Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 19, 280 - - _Holy Fair, The_, 76, 248 - - _Holy Willie’s Prayer_, 46, 76, 111, 249, 250, 307 - - Home, John, 21, 28, 40, 42, 75 - - Homer, 49, 75 - - Hopetoun, James Hope, Earl of, 228 - - Horace, 236 - - Housman, A. E., 244-245 - - ‘How are Thy servants blest’ (Addison), 40 - - Hume, David, 29, 31, 197, 278, 279, 300, 304 - - Humphry, James, 83 - - Hutcheson, Francis, 20, 22, 281, 285 - - Hyslop, William, 120 - - - Immortality, Burns’s views on, 284-286 - - ‘I murder hate,’ 82, 155, 237 - - India, 190 - - Inquisition, Spanish, 17 - - Irvine, 67, 71, 72, 79-84, 87, 88 - - Irving, Washington, 266 - - ‘I’ve seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling,’ 43 - - - Jacobitism, Burns’s, 209, 229, 287-290, 304 - - Jamaica, 93, 98, 147, 151, 162, 171, 172, 191-193, 206, 239 - - James I, of Scotland, 23 - - James VI, of Scotland, I of England, 3, 23, 287 - - Jefferson, Thomas, 272 - - Jeffrey, Francis, 29 - - Jeffreys, George, 293 - - _Jocky and Maggie’s Courtship_, 46 - - _John Anderson_, 26, 264 - - _John Barleycorn_, 246 - - _John o’ Badenyon_, 43, 256 - - Johnson, James, 120, 132, 214, 220, 254-264, 269, 273 - - Johnson, Samuel, 11, 24, 29, 31, 43, 102, 300 - - Johnston, William, 297 - - _Jolly Beggars, The_, 59, 111, 144, 249, 307 - - Journalism, Burns and, 205-206 - - _Junius_, 61 - - - Kames, Henry Home, Lord, 102, 108, 129 - - Keats, John, 11, 35, 49, 75, 79, 239, 250 - - Kemp, John, 162, 164, 165 - - Kilmarnock, 76, 167, 193-194, 198, 306 - - Kilpatrick, Nellie, 63, 68, 82, 137, 234-235 - - King’s Arms, Dumfries, 120 - - Kinmonth, 36 - - Kipling, Rudyard, 247, 305 - - Kirk, Scottish, 16-23 - - Kirkcudbright, 125, 131, 230 - - Kirkoswald, 37, 55-60, 69, 72 - - Kirkpatrick, Joseph, 282, 288 - - Kiwanis Club, 104 - - Knox, John, 16, 19, 22 - - - Lake District, 47 - - Lamb, Charles, 278 - - _Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn_, 240 - - Landor, Walter Savage, 250 - - Lapraik, John, 249 - - Lapraik, Tod, 305 - - Laurie, Annie, 250 - - Laurie, Sir Robert, 121-122 - - Lawrie, George, 99, 195 - - Lawrie, Mrs. George, 153 - - _Leader Haughs and Yarrow_, 255 - - Leeward Islands, 176 - - Lewars, Jessie, 130, 148, 149, 277 - - Lewars, John, 130, 295 - - _Lewis Gordon_, 272 - - Letters, Burns’s, 60-61 - - _Letters Moral and Entertaining_ (E. Rowe), 60 - - Linlithgow, 90 - - Lippo Lippi, Fra, 250 - - Lisbon, 9 - - Little, Jenny, 158-159 - - Livingstone, David, 303 - - Lochaber, 256 - - Lochiel, Donald Cameron of, 301 - - Lochlie, 62-63, 70, 72-73, 74, 84-88, 90, 138, 208, 214 - - Lochmaben, 182 - - _Lochmaben Harper, The_, 258 - - Locke, John, 22 - - Lockerbie, 182 - - Lockhart, John Gibson, 118 - - _Logan Braes_, 299 - - Lomond, Loch, 47 - - London, 204, 287, 293, 295 - - Longtown, 204 - - Lorimer, Jean, 148, 149, 219 - - Lorimer, William, 219 - - Loudoun, 99, 153, 195 - - Louis XVI, 160, 292, 294, 298 - - _Lounger, The_, 31, 302 - - Lowell, James Russell, 247 - - Loyal Natives Club, Dumfries, 126-127 - - - M’Auley, John, 151 - - _Macbeth_, 261, 266 - - Mackenzie, Henry, 12, 31, 58, 60, 66, 75, 84, 93, 118, 125, 197, 199, - 201, 251, 252, 301, 305 - - Mackenzie, John, 90-92, 99 - - Mackenzie, S. (Dumfries), 124 - - Mackintosh, James, 292 - - McKnight, --, 274 - - ‘Maclaren, Ian.’ _See_ Watson, John - - M’Lehose, Agnes, 70, 114, 125, 144, 148, 152, 153, 156, 160-172, 174, - 176, 179, 209, 210, 212, 221, 251, 258, 281, 283, 284, 307 - - M’Lehose, James, 162, 166, 171, 172 - - M’Lure, David, 62, 70, 72, 85-88 - - M’Murdo, John, 111, 133 - - Macpherson, James, 27, 43 - - _M’Pherson’s Farewell_, 264, 307 - - Mallet, David, 30 - - _Man of Feeling, The_, 31, 35, 58, 60, 84, 144, 189, 279, 299, 306 - - _Man Was Made to Mourn_, 236 - - Manners, Burns’s, 102-104, 144, 153-157 - - _Manual of Religious Belief_ (William Burnes), 59, 279 - - Marie Antoinette, 160, 298 - - Marischal, George Keith, 10th Earl of, 36 - - Marriage, Burns’s, 168-176, 189 - - _Marrow of Modern Divinity, The_, 281 - - Marxism, 18 - - _Mary Morison_, 251 - - Mary, Queen of Scots, 300-301 - - Masons. _See_ Freemasonry - - Massachusetts, 16, 20 - - Masson, Arthur, 40, 41-42, 58, 60 - - Mathieson, W. L., quoted, 18-19 - - Mauchline, 67, 75, 83, 89, 90, 93, 124, 138, 150, 165, 166, 170, 173, - 174, 195, 212 - - _Mauchline Wedding, The_, 240 - - Maule, Ramsay, of Panmure, 127 - - Maxwell, James, 133, 294, 298 - - Maxwell, Robert, 111 - - Melrose, 266 - - _Merry Muses of Caledonia, The_, 111-112, 253-254 - - _Mill, Mill O, The_, 242 - - Mill Street, Dumfries, 133, 222 - - Millan, --, 30 - - Miller, Eliza, 13, 145 - - Miller, Patrick, 101, 114, 120, 133, 202, 207-212, 220 - - Miller, Mrs. Patrick, 220 - - Miller, Patrick, Jr., 206 - - Milne, A. A., 307 - - Milton, John, 42, 164, 244, 282 - - _Minstrel, The_ (Beattie), 25, 29 - - _Mirror, The_, 31, 302 - - Mississippi Bubble, 7 - - Mitchell, John, 111, 217, 218 - - Moderates. _See_ New Lights - - Moffat, 228 - - Monboddo, James Burnet, Lord, 108 - - Monkland Friendly Society, 106, 281 - - _Monody on a Lady Famed for her Caprice_, 181-182 - - Montgomerie, Margaret, 103 - - Montrose, 117 - - Montrose, James Graham, Marquis of, 303 - - Moodie, Alexander, 76 - - Moore, John, 78, 104, 199, 201, 252 - - Morison, Mary, 68 - - Mossgiel, 13, 73-74, 87-88, 95, 138, 143, 167, 190, 202, 204, 208, - 211, 214 - - Mound, Edinburgh, 8 - - Mount Oliphant, 34, 41, 48, 50, 54-56, 59, 61-62, 70, 72, 208, 220, - 279 - - Muir, Robert, 150, 198, 284 - - Muir, Thomas, 293, 294 - - Muir, Mrs. William, 165 - - Mundell, James, 120 - - Munro, Neil, 305 - - Murdoch, John, 34-35, 39-43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 51-55, 57, 204 - - Murray, Sir James, 272 - - Murray, John, of Broughton, 4, 30 - - Murry, John Middleton, 250 - - Music, Scottish, 26-28, 40, 120-121 - - Music, influence on Burns, 236-237, 240-244, 246, 248 - - ‘My father was a farmer,’ 236 - - ‘My Love is like a red red rose,’ 26, 107, 261 - - - Nairne, Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, Baroness, 261, 305 - - _Nancy_, West-Indiaman, 192 - - Napoleon, 7, 28, 225, 226 - - Nationalism, Scottish, 303 - - New Brig, Ayr, 31 - - Newcastle, 204 - - New England, 16-17, 247, 280 - - New Lights, 21-23, 66-67, 75-78, 95, 280-287, 299 - - Newton, Charles Hay, Lord. _See_ Hay - - Nicol, William, 98, 112, 115-119, 207 - - _Night Thoughts_ (Young), 169 - - Nimmo, Erskine, 162, 209 - - Nith, River, 220, 226, 245 - - Niven, William, 56, 61, 63 - - Norval, Charles, 85 - - - _Observations on the Scottish Dialect_ (Sinclair), 29-30 - - Ochiltree, 244 - - Ochiltree, Edie, 188, 305 - - Ochtertyre, 256, 287 - - ‘Of a’ the airts,’ 149, 174 - - Oldbuck, Jonathan, 265 - - Old Lights, 21-23, 66-67, 75-78, 279-287 - - _On God’s Sovereignty_, 281 - - _On the Death of Lord President Dundas_, 107 - - ‘O poortith cauld,’ 271 - - _Ordination, The_, 76 - - Orr, Thomas, 61 - - _Ossian_ (Macpherson), 27, 43 - - Oswald, James, 27 - - Oswald, Mary Ramsay, of Auchencruive, 144 - - Oswald, Richard, of Auchencruive, 291 - - ‘O wat ye wha that lo’es me,’ 110 - - ‘O wert thou in the cauld blast,’ 251, 277 - - - Paine, Thomas, 226, 290 - - Paisley, 167, 198, 306 - - Palmer, Thomas Fyshe, 293, 294 - - _Pamela_, 58 - - _Pantheon, The_ (Tooke), 49 - - Park, Anne, 146, 148, 174 - - Park, Mungo, 303 - - Parliament, 3-4, 5-6, 289, 290-294, 295, 302 - - Parnell, Charles Stuart, 4 - - Paton, Elizabeth, 74, 76, 138-139, 140, 141, 143, 147, 148, 150, 193, - 194, 203 - - Patriotism, Burns’s, 234, 278, 287-306 - - Patronage, Kirk, 22 - - Pattison, Alexander, 198 - - Peacock, --, 80, 83 - - _Peggy Bawn_, 236 - - Percy, Thomas, 25, 43 - - Perry, James, 206 - - _Philosophy of Natural History_ (Smellie), 105 - - ‘Pindar, Peter.’ _See_ Wolcot, John - - Pinkerton, John, 43 - - Pitt, William, 226, 290 - - _Plane-stanes and the Causey, The_, 248 - - Pleyel, Ignaz Joseph, 268, 270 - - _Poems_, Burns’s, Kilmarnock ed., 29, 82, 94, 98, 118, 139, 142, 154, - 191, 193-196, 202, 239, 244, 247-249 - - _Poems_, Burns’s, 1st Edinburgh ed., 95, 98, 105, 106, 118, 127, - 195-201, 203, 254 - - _Poems_, Burns’s, 2nd Edinburgh ed., 204-205 - - _Poems_, Burns’s, Gilbert Burns’s ed., 203 - - _Poet’s Progress, The_, 234 - - _Poet’s Welcome to his Bastart Wean, A_, 111, 150 - - Politics, Burns’s, 102, 131, 225-226, 230-231, 278, 287-299 - - Poosie Nansie, 57 - - Pope, Alexander, 42, 49, 60, 181, 216 - - Port Antonio, 192 - - Potterrow, Edinburgh, 165 - - _Prayer in the Prospect of Death_, 84 - - Preaching, Scottish, 19-20 - - _Prelude_ (Wordsworth), 234 - - Prestonpans, 26 - - Prior, Matthew, 42 - - Princes Street, Edinburgh, 8 - - Provençal, 23 - - _Psalms_, 40, 135, 151, 236 - - Puritanism, 16-17 - - - Queensberry, William Douglas, Duke of, 225 - - - Raeburn, Sir Henry, 107 - - Ramsay, Allan, 23-25, 75, 91, 104, 247, 248-249, 252, 301, 304 - - Ramsay, David, 288 - - Ramsay, John, 287 - - Rankine, Anne, 68 - - Rankine, John, 74, 77, 98, 249 - - _Rantin’ Rovin’ Robin_, 307 - - ‘Rape of the Sabines, The,’ 122, 180-181 - - Reformation, Scottish, 23, 290 - - Regency Bill, 226 - - Reid, Alexander, 183, 229 - - Religion, 59 - - Religion, Burns’s, 278-287 - - _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_ (Percy), 25, 43 - - Revolution of 1688, 288-289 - - Riccarton, 76 - - Richardson, Samuel, 58 - - Richmond, John, 13, 65, 89-90, 112, 141, 143, 144, 147, 151 - - Riddell, Elizabeth Kennedy (Mrs. Robert), 177, 181, 182 - - Riddell, Jean Fergusson, 177 - - Riddell, Maria Banks Woodley, 105, 110, 122-123, 125, 144, 148, 152, - 175, 176-187, 219, 267, 295, 298 - - Riddell, Robert, 61, 96, 120-124, 148, 176, 181, 182, 260, 265, 267, - 291, 294 - - Riddell, Walter, 122, 127, 176-177, 178, 181, 182 - - _Rights of Man, The_, 292, 299 - - Robertson, William, 22, 31, 155 - - Robertson, William, of Lude, 291 - - Rochester, 11 - - Rockingham, Charles Watson-Wentworth, Marquis of, 225 - - Rodger, Hugh, 55 - - _Rosamond_, schooner, 226-227, 295, 297 - - Ross, Alexander, 24 - - Rossetti, Christina, 162 - - Rotary Club, 104 - - Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 272, 299, 300 - - Rowe, Elizabeth, 60 - - Russell, John, 76 - - Ryedale, 126, 130 - - - Sabbath, Scottish, 17, 92 - - St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, 9 - - St. James’s Lodge, Tarbolton, 67-68, 91 - - St. Kitts, 176 - - St. Mary’s Isle, 131-132 - - Samothrace, Victory of, 250 - - Sanitation, 9-13 - - Satan, Milton’s, 164, 282 - - Savannah-la-Mar, 192 - - Schetki, Theodor, 28 - - _Schoolmistress, The_ (Shenstone), 57 - - Schools, Scottish, 38-42 - - _Scotch Drink_, 248 - - _Scotland and the Union_ (W. L. Mathieson), quoted, 18-19 - - Scots language, 23-31, 75 - - _Scots Magazine_, 31, 100, 228 - - _Scots Musical Museum, The_, 120-121, 214, 220, 254-264, 269, 273-274, - 276 - - ‘Scots wha hae,’ 272-273, 292, 300 - - Scott, Sir Walter, 6, 9, 44, 47, 65, 100, 104, 121, 135, 197, 246, - 261, 265, 267, 274, 293, 300, 304, 305 - - Scottish National Gallery, 8 - - _Seasons, The_ (Thomson), 25, 57 - - Sedition trials, 272 - - _Select Collection of Scotish Airs_ (Thomson), 205, 257, 264, 268-277 - - Selkirk, Dunbar Douglas, Earl of, 96, 131-132, 293 - - Sentimentality, 58 - - _Sentimental Tommy_, 153 - - _Shadow of the Glen, The_ (Synge), 46 - - Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 22 - - Shakespeare, William, 11, 34-35, 42, 261 - - Sharpe, Charles Kirkpatrick, 102 - - Shaw, George Bernard, 65 - - Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 35, 239, 306 - - Shenstone, William, 57, 75, 238 - - Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 278 - - Sheridan, Thomas, 29 - - Sidney, Sir Philip, 28 - - Sillar, David, 65, 89 - - Simpson, William, 244, 249 - - Sinclair, Sir John, 29-30, 301, 302 - - _Six Excellent New Songs_, 45 - - Skinner, John, 43, 256 - - Smellie, William, 103, 105-106, 110, 121, 177-178, 181, 253, 254 - - Smith, Adam, 31, 206, 278 - - Smith, James, 13, 89-90, 112, 150, 173, 249 - - Smith, Leonard, 215, 216 - - Smollett, Tobias, 58 - - Smuggling, 56 - - Snyder, Franklyn Bliss, 145, 147, 199 - - Solway, 184-187, 226 - - _Sorrows of Werther, The_, 115, 125 - - Souter Johnie, 97 - - South Sea Bubble, 7 - - Southey, Robert, 197 - - _Sow’s Tail to Geordie, The_, 26 - - _Spectator, The_, 31, 42, 164, 302 - - Spenser, Edmund, 42, 157 - - Spenserian stanza, 57 - - Spinoza, Baruch, 281 - - Stackhouse, Thomas, 48 - - Staig, David, 223, 224 - - _Star_, London, 205 - - Steenson, Steenie, 305 - - Sterne, Laurence, 42, 66 - - Stevenson, Robert Louis, 305 - - Stewart, Catherine Gordon, of Stair, 153 - - Stewart, Dugald, 61, 96-97, 98, 99, 118, 195 - - Stewart, Mrs. --, 165, 209 - - Stewart, William, 229 - - Stinking Vennel, Dumfries, 221, 222 - - Stirling, 209, 294 - - Stobbie, Adam, 130, 232 - - Stuart, House of, 4, 287-289, 294 - - Stuart, Peter, 205 - - Surgeoner, Jenny, 13, 143 - - _Sweet Afton_, 307 - - Swift, Jonathan, 60, 304 - - Syme, John, 57, 96, 109, 111, 125-134, 174, 181, 203, 229, 267, 295, - 296 - - Synge, John Millington, 46 - - - _Tam Glen_, 264 - - _Tam o’ Shanter_, 59, 121, 204, 264-268, 305 - - Tarbolton, 62-67, 89, 90, 124 - - Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club, 63-66, 88, 89 - - Tarbolton Mill, 165, 167 - - _Tatler, The_, 42, 302 - - Taylor, John, 100 - - _Tea-Table Miscellany_ (Ramsay), 25 - - Telford, Thomas, 127, 213 - - Tennant, John, 211 - - ‘The last time I cam o’er the moor,’ 179 - - ‘The robin cam to the wren’s nest,’ 277 - - Thompson, Harold William, 305 - - Thomson, George, 61, 109, 133-134, 148, 186, 205, 232, 241, 243, 244, - 249, 256, 258, 260, 264, 268-277 - - Thomson, James, 25, 28, 31, 42, 57, 151, 302 - - Thomson, Peggy, 56, 59, 69, 146 - - ‘Thou Lingering Star,’ 148 - - _Thrawn Janet_, 305 - - Tinwald House, 182 - - _Titus Andronicus_, 34-35 - - _To a Haggis_, 248 - - _To a Mountain Daisy_, 59, 307 - - _To a Mouse_, 307 - - _Toddlin hame_, 275 - - ‘To Fanny fair could I impart,’ 242 - - Tooke, Andrew, 49 - - Tooke, John Horne, 226 - - Tories, 225-226 - - _Treatise on Solitude_ (Zimmermann), 125 - - Tudor, House of, 288 - - _Tullochgorum_, 43, 256 - - _Twa Dogs, The_, 154 - - _Twa Herds, The_, 76, 92-93 - - Twain, Mark, 65, 280 - - Tytler, William, 253 - - - Union, Act of, 3, 6, 16, 23, 302-303 - - Unitarianism, 280 - - United States, 7, 29, 190, 218, 289, 290 - - Urbani, Pietro, 28 - - - Versailles, 100 - - _Vicar of Wakefield, The_, 31 - - Virgil, 252, 276 - - Vocabulary, Burns’s, 247 - - Voltaire, 300 - - - Wallace, Lady Antonia, of Craigie, 155 - - Wallace, Lady Eglintoune Maxwell, 155 - - _Wallace, Sir William, History of_ (Blind Harry), 25, 45 - - Wallace, Sir William, 82, 153, 154, 234 - - Walpole, Horace, 278 - - Wardlaw, Lady Elizabeth, 27, 42-43 - - Washington, George, 290 - - Watson, John, 305, 307 - - Wedderburn, Alexander, 301 - - Wesley, John, 14, 278 - - West Indies, 7 - - Westminster, 293 - - ‘When Princes and Prelates,’ 111 - - Whigs, 102, 131, 225-226, 230-231, 287, 294 - - _Whistle, The_, 121-122, 225 - - ‘Whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad,’ 264 - - Whitefoord, Sir John, 91, 99 - - Wig Club, Edinburgh, 104 - - Wigglesworth, Michael, 20 - - Wilkes, John, 287, 289 - - Wilson, John (‘Dr. Hornbook’), 39, 83 - - Wilson, John (Kilmarnock), 194 - - Wolcot, John, 270 - - Wolsey, Cardinal, 40 - - Women, Burns’s views on, 149-150 - - Women, education of, 37, 135-136 - - _Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret_, The, 295 - - Wood, Alexander, 210 - - Woodley Park, 122-123, 178-179, 180, 182 - - Wordsworth, William, 226, 234, 241, 278, 284, 304, 306 - - World War, 303 - - - Young, Edward, 169, 279 - - ‘Young Jocky was the blithest lad,’ 272 - - York, House of, 288 - - - Zimmermann, Johann Georg von, 125 - - * * * * * - - - - - Transcriber’s note - - Spelling within quotations has been retained as published. Minor - punctuation errors have been changed without notice. The following - Printer errors have been changed. - - Page 8: “ridge which parallelled it” “ridge which paralleled it” - Page 65: “described Tarbolton townfolk” “described Tarbolton - townsfolk” - Page 164: “was promising lifelong” “was promising life-long” - Page 166: “The artificial and hot-house” “The artificial and - hothouse” - Page 180: “burlesque of the espisode” “burlesque of the episode” - Page 249: “as the workingday world” “as the working-day world” - Page 312: “Crane, Icabod” “Crane, Ichabod” - Page 316: “Masons. _See_ Freemasons” “Masons. _See_ Freemasonry” - - All other inconsistencies are as in the original. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIDE AND PASSION: ROBERT -BURNS, 1759-1796 *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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