The one immortal bard of humanity. -RUSSELL, A. P., 1888, A Club of One, p. 150. To-night amid Canadian snows, In lordly hall and cottage home, Where'er the blood of Scotsmen flows, Where'er the feet of Scotsmen roam; ONE name upon the lips grows sweet, More rich than wine from purple urns, With thrill electric flashing fleet, The name of ROBERT BURNS. - MACFARLAND, JOHN, 1888, Robert Burns, Jan. 25. In The love poetry of Burns affords an abundant exemplification of nearly all the known devices peculiar to the theme. Consisting of short effusions, mainly songs, it almost entirely excludes plot-interest; occasionally there is a slight use of narrative, as in "The Soldier's Return" and "There was a lass and she was fair." regard to description of the object of love, Burns usually depends on a few unsystematic touches, expressive of the emotion excited. Sometimes, however, he does enter on a regular enumeration of the qualities that charm; but his method even then is rather to elevate the object by comparisons, both figurative and literal, than to give any distinct impression of the personal appearance. BAIN, ALEXANDER, 1888, English Composition and Rhetoric, Part Second, p. 157. In respect of genius, I think it is now universally admitted that our Ayrshire bard has gained for himself, by the number, the variety, and the brilliancy of his productions, a place in the first rank of the great singers of the intellectual world,Pindar, Chaucer, Horace, Hafiz, Goethe, Béranger, Moore, and if there be any others who enjoy an equally wide recognition. If ever there was a song-writer who could say with the most catholic comprehensiveness in the words of the old comedian, "I am a man, and all things human are kin to me," it was Robert Burns. In this respect he is the Shakespeare of lyric poetry. . . If inferior to Coleridge in ideal speculation, to Wordsworth in harmonious contemplation, and to Southey in book-learning, in all that concerns living men and human life and human society he was extremely sharp-sighted and not only wise in penetrating to the inmost springs of human thought and sentiment, but in the judgment of conduct eminently shrewd and sagacious; gifted, in the highest degree, with that fundamental virtue of all sound Scotsmen, common-sense, without which great genius in full career is apt to lead a man astray from his surroundings, and make him most a stranger to that with which in common life he ought to be most familiar.BLACKIE, JOHN STUART, 1888, Life of Robert Burns (Great Writers), pp. 157,160. [Song] drooped and fell, and one 'neath northern skies, With southern heart, who tilled his father's field, Found Poesy a-dying, bade her rise And touch quick nature's hem and go forth healed. On life's broad plain the ploughman's conquering share Upturned the fallow lands of truth anew, And o'er the formal garden's trim parterre The peasant's team a ruthless furrow drew. WATSON, WILLIAM, 1890, Wordsworth's Grave. To Burns the very air was charged with poetry, and his heart responded to every appeal made to his imagination. He saw Nature with a clear and penetrating vision; his emotions and experiences were blended with the world about him, and in a single line a whole landscape flashes into view.. Burns spoke of Nature without a touch of self-consciousness and with the intimacy of one born to the soil; he loved with infinite tenderness every living thing that made its home in the fields. His early familiarity with field and sky, the solitude. that came with that intercourse, the sensitiveness of his imagination, and the passion of his nature gave his poetry a thrill and rapture born only of the deepest emotion. The commonest wild-flower, in the verse of this passionate singer, has its roots beside the fountain of tears, and not a leaf stirs or falls but its image is caught in the tumultuous sweep and current of life.MABIE, HAMILTON WRIGHT, 1891-93, Short Studies in Literature, p. 101. It is for his service to Scotland in the matter of songs that we specially delight to honour him. It was he, more than all else put together, who made Scottish song the glorious thing that it is. Prior to Burns's appearance on the stage of human existence what was the condition, Sir, of our national minstrelsy? We had a popular song-book polluted on every page. Such of the popular songs of the time-if you except a dozen or so, "The Flower o' the Forest," "Auld Robin Gray," "Nae luck about the hoose," "Logie o' Buchan," "Johnnie Cope," "Maggie Lauder," and "Down the burn, Davie," and one or two more--such of them, I say, with these few exceptions, as were not tainted with vulgarity and vile innuendo, were the most puerile and feckless doggerel. Burns set himself to purify these old songs, and gave us a song-book which is like a human psalter by comparison. It is when we take up Ramsay's "Evergreen" and the "Tea-Table Miscellany," or Herd's collection of old songs and ballads, and look at the original of "Dainty Davie," "She rose and loot me in," and "John Anderson my jo," and some more that we discover the noble-the God's workwhich he performed. It is for the purification of these old songs, and for the hundred and more original gems which he added to our song-book, that we regard Robert Burns as a gift from the gods. It is for this that we can overlook so many of his faults and failings. It is for this that we delight to honour his memoryfor this we are "a' sae prood o' Robin." -FORD, ROBERT, 1893, Address Delivered Before the Barlinnie Burns Club, Jan. 25; Burnsiana, vol. IV, p. 87. And the natural greatness of mind that prompted this ambition was not without special influences to keep the flame alive. Had Burns been educated as other local rhymers were, he might have remained, like them, content with local fame, ignorant of the great world outside, hungering for no applause beyond his own small circle, because he was unaware of anything more to be desired. But the education of Burns was different from that of other local rhymers, and had carried him to spiritual altitudes, the views from which were bounded by a much wider horizon. In common with all the other young men of the time, rich and poor, Burns had the advantage for a poet of living in a poetical atmosphere; but he had the further special advantage of coming under personal influences that helped powerfully to give his work the quality of greatness.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1894, The Literature of the Georgian Era, ed. Knight, p. 160. The collective poems of Robert Burns have been reprinted on a great number of occasions, and in every variety of form. It is calculated that by the end of 1816 no less than 22 editions had appeared in London, 19 in Edinburgh, 16 in the United States, 4 in Dublin, 4 in Belfast, 3 in Glasgow, 2 in Berwick-upon-Tweed, 1 at Kilmarnock, 1 at Paisley, and 9 in other towns scattered about England and Scotland. The original edition appeared at Kilmarnock in 1786, and for eighty-four years from that date, say up to 1870, only two years are recorded (1791 and 1795), in which at least one edition of Burns' works was not published. This record of continuous publication is only surpassed in the case of three other books, viz., the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, and the "De Imitatione Christi." The most extensive collection of Burnsiana in existence is probably that in the museum at Kay Park, Kilmarnock. It consists of nearly 1000 volumes, a large proportion of which comprise various editions of the poet's works published in the United Kingdom, and the remainder of books. touching on his life or writing or the scenes with which he was associated. . . In March, 1888, at the sale of the second portion of the extensive library of the late Mr. Gibson-Craig, a good copy of the Kilmarnock edition of "Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect," sold for £111, and on another occasion a rebound copy brought £86.—SLATER, J. H., 1894, Early Editions, pp. 56, 57, 58. Not his the light of Shakespeare's line, Nor Milton's massive splendour; But Scotland rich in Auld Langsyne Needs naething mair to mend her, And while a "Daisy" decks the soil, And while a wrang needs rightin', The rough, strong-hearted sons of toil, Shall still his songs delight in. -MURDOCH, ALEXANDER G., 1894, Rhymin' Robin, Burnsiana, vol. IV, p. 24. It has been the common responsibility of his biographers to point out how differently he might have lived, how much more wisely he might have ordered his days. More wisely, perhaps, but not so well. There is a diviner economy in these things than we have come to allow.― RHYS, ERNEST, 1895, ed., The Lyrical Poems of Burns. John Barleycorn in theology with a genuine religious senPrepared his sweetest rose and sharpest timent. It is unnecessary to search very thorn; The witches set their heads and hoofs to work, To hunt O'Shanter from the ancient kirk; The world would soon a world of love enshrine Within the golden bars of "Auld Lang Syne;" -if All the same, this disability weighs me down with a sense of hopeless obtuseness when I consider the deportment of the average intelligent Scot at a Burns banquet, or a Burns conversazione, or a Burns festival, or the unveiling of a Burns statue, or the putting up of a pillar on some spot made famous by Burns. All over the world and all under it, too, when their time comes-Scotsmen are preparing after-dinner speeches about Burns. The great globe swings round out of the sun into the dark; there is always midnight somewhere; and always in this shifting region the eye of imagination sees orators gesticulating over Burns; companies of heated exiles with crossed arms shouting "Auld Lang Syne;" lesser groups-i haply they be lesser reposing under tables, still in honour of Burns. And as the vast continents sweep "eastering out of the high shadow which reaches beyond the moon, " and as new nations, with their cities and villages, their mountains and seashores, rise up on the morning-side, lo! fresh troops, and still fresh troops, and yet again fresh troops, wend or are carried out of action with the dawn. None but a churl would wish this enthusiasm abated. But why is it all lavished on Burns? That is what gravels the Southron. Why Burns? Why not Sir Walter? Had I the honor to be a fellowcountryman of Scott, and had I command of the racial tom-tom, it seems to me that I would tune upon it in honor of that great man until I dropped.-QUILLERCOUCH, A. T., 1896, Adventures in Criticism, p. 109. A man of Burns's temperament, born in the middle of that (the 18th) century, was almost bound to combine rationalism particularly in his actual theological environment for the origins of his religion. He had the same bias in reasoningtowards materialism, empiricism, "common-sense," as most of the leading intellect of the age. . . . It would be a mistake to try to trace any very close connection between the thought of Burns, so far it was dogmatic, and the doctrines held by the New Light ministers who took the young farmer by the hand, and eulogised the satires which he wrote for their side. The doctrine spread by Auld, Russell and their kind disgusted him; but his polemic against them was purely neg The con ative and destructive. sciousness of the living presence of God in nature was always stronger in him than any theory of redemption. An intellectual sceptic, he was not really interested in theological dogma, though moral and emotional causes preserved in him certain relics of more or less inter-dependant doctrines.-WALLACE, WILLIAM, 1896, rev. The Life and Works of Robert Burns, ed. by Robert Chambers. Rare as was the poetic gift of Burns, and unique in their quality of pure elemental passion as were his bursts of song, the poet himself has no place in what is mainly a history of influences. and tendencies. and tendencies. Writing as he did-so long at least as he wrote poetry and not somewhat inferior verse-in the Lowland Scottish vernacular, he naturally could not contribute anything directly to the development of English poetic literature. Nor does it even appear that he directly influenced those who were the main contributors to this work.-TRAILL, HENRY DUFF, 1896, Social England, vol. v, p. 445. His ideas are to use the rough old Lockian division-ideas of sensation, not of reflection; and when he goes beyond them he is sensible, healthy, respectable, but not deep or high. In his own range there are few depths or heights to which he has not soared or plunged. . . . In the expression of the triumph and despair of love, not sicklied over with any thought as in most modern poets, only Catullus and Sappho can touch Burns. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1896, A History of Nineteenth Century Literature, pp. 15, 16. Always a poet, he was more, much more than a poet. He was a student of man, of all sorts of men; caring much, as a student, for the baser sort which reveled in Poosie Nansie's dram-shop, and which he celebrated in "The Jolly Beggars;" but caring more as a man, for the better sort which languished in huts where poor men lodged, and which he was the voice of lamentation in "Man was Made to Mourn." He was a student of manners, which he painted with a sure hand, his masterpiece being that reverential reproduction of the family life at Lochlea "The Cotter's Saturday Night." He was a student of nature, his love of which was conspicuous in his poetry, flushing his words with picturesque phrases and flooding his lines with the feeling of outdoor life. He was a student of animal life, a lover of horses and dogs, observant of their habits and careful of their comfort. He felt for the little mouse which his plowshare turned out of its nest, and he pitied the poor hare which the unskillful fowler could only wound. The commoners of the earth and air were dear to him; and the flower besides his path, the gowan wet with dew, was precious in his eyes. His heart was large, his mind was comprehensive, and his temper singularly sweet and sunny.-STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY, 1896, Library of the World's Best Literature, ed. Warner, vol. v, p.2839. Burns is one of the Immortals. What a fortunate thing for us that he was not educated, let us say at Eton and Balliol! There are many of Burns's poems (humorous and pathetic) which are superb.LOCKER-LAMPSON, FREDERICK, 1896, My Confidences, p. 178. Other poets may be the favourites of a class or a clique; Burns is the favorite of the whole world. The secret of this universal favor is to be found in the fact that he was born in a lowly condition of life, close to our mother earth, and gave utterance to the rudimentary sentiments, the abiding sorrows, and the constant yearnings of human nature.—AUSTIN, ALFRED, 1896, Address at the Unveiling of the Statue to Burns at Irvine, July. In his love songs we hear again, even more simply, more directly the same natural music which in the age of Elizabeth enchanted the world. . It was the strength of his passions and the weakness of his moral will which made his poetry and spoilt his life.-BROOKE, STOPFORD A., 1896, English Literature, p. 226. I come here as a loyal burgess of Dumfries to do honour to the greatest burgess of Dumfries. Mankind owes him a general debt. But the debt of Scotland is special. For Burns exalted our race, he hallowed Scotland and the Scottish tongue. Before his time we had for a long period been scarcely recognised, we had been falling out of the recollection of the world. From the time of the union of the Crowns, and still more from the time of the legislative union, Scotland has lapsed into obscurity. Except for an occasional riot or a Jacobite rising, her existance was almost forgotten. She had, indeed, her Robertsons and her Humes writing history to general admiration, but no trace of Scottish authorship was discoverable in their works; indeed, every flavour of national idiom was carefully excluded. The Scottish dialect, as Burns called it, was in danger of perishing. Burns seemed at this juncture to start to his feet and re-assert Scotland's claim to national existence; his Scottish notes rang through the world, and he thus preserved the Scottish language forever; for mankind will never allow to die that idiom. in which his songs and poems are enshrined. shrined. That is a part of Scotland's debt to Burns.-ROSEBERY, ARCHIBALD PHILIP PRIMROSE LORD, 1896, Address at Dumfries, July 21. No poet, probably, excepting Shakespeare, ever owed more than Burns to the suggestions of predecessors in his art. Hardly, indeed, is there anything in his work, down even to details, for which the example is not to be found in the pages of some earlier Scottish poet-Dunbar, Lyndsay, Semple, Ramsay, Fergusson, and countless unnamed song and ballad writers. With the works of all these he was closely familiar. At the same time no poet, excepting Shakespeare, ever proved himself so capable of transmuting the rude ore of earlier suggestion into the fine gold of immortal song. It is difficult at the present day, when all its effects are a common possession, to appreciate the native strength and originality of Burns's work. This, however, may be ventured, that what the Revolution at that time did for France at a cost of untold horror and streams of blood, the poetry of Burns did for Scotland. Who The griefs and joys that weave the weft With craftsman's cunning, keen and deft, But never, since bright earth was born In rapture of the enkindling morn, Might godlike wrath and sunlike scorn That was and is And shall be while false weeds are worn Find word like his. Above the rude and radiant earth That heaves and glows from firth to firth In vale and mountain, bright in dearth And warm in wealth, Which gave his fiery glory birth By chance and stealth, Above the storms of praise and blame That blur with mist his lustrous name, His thunderous laughter went and came, And lives and flies; The roar that follows on the flame When lightning dies. Earth, and the snow-dimmed heights of air, And water winding soft and fair Through still sweet places, bright and bare, By bent and byre, Taught him what hearts within them were: But his was fire. -SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1896, Robert Burns, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 39, pp. 183, 184. By virtue of his ardent and undisciplined temperament, by his peasant origin and his experience of the sufferings of the poor, by that pride of manhood and of genius which made him feel himself an equal of prince or peer, by the zeal of his humanitarian sympathies, by his sentimental Jacobitism and his imaginative enthusiasm for the traditions of Scottish independence, by the fact that he belonged to the democratic Presbyterian Church and sympathized with the party of spiritual revolt, Burns was fitted to be a spokesman of the passions of the time.-DOWDEN, EDWARD, 1897, The French Revolution and English Literature, p. 146. Not only does he take whatever the Vernacular School can give in such matters as tone, sentiment, method, diction phrase; but also, he is content to run in debt to it for suggestions as regards ideas and for models in style. It was fortunate for him and for his book, as it was fortunate for the world at large-as, too, it was afterwards to be fortunate for Scots song-that he was thus imitative in kind and thus traditional in practice. He had the sole ear of the Vernacular Muse; there was not a tool in her budget of which he was not master; and he took his place, the moment he moved for it, not so much, perhaps, by reason of his uncommon capacity as, because he discovered himself to his public in the very terms-of diction form, style, sentiment even-with which that public was familiar from of old, and in which it was waiting and longing to be addressed. HENLEY, WILLIAM ERNEST, 1897, Life, Genius, Achievement, The Poetry of Robert Burns, vol. IV, pp. 270, 272. Burns rides the ways of literature hedged by a numerous and terrible guard of devoted Scots, and if any hat is not doffed as he passes the irreverent offender is a marked man. Who dares lay hands on a poet guarded by a nation? . Burns, like Homer, is not merely a poet, but a literature. He has succeeded in fulfilling the old savage ideal-he has eaten up all his predecessors, and become possessed of their united powers. It is useless to haggle over much about what he borrowed: one can only envy the gigantic luck of his chance. Such vamps as the one I have analysed from Mr. Henley's notes can only be credited to him as brilliant luck brilliantly used. But the pieces I enumerated of the third class proved that he could write charming songs without such luck; though I think, on the whole, they prove that he wrote still better when he borrowed. Taking him, borrowings and all, the merit of his songs lies in the partly dramatic kind; they display, vividly and pictorially, the life of a whole peasantry, as it has not been displayed in English literature. THOMPSON, FRANCIS, 1897, Mr. Henley's Burns, The Academy, vol. 51, pp. 273, 274. No poet, not even Shakespeare, has been so minutely, lovingly studied as Burns.— DAVIDSON, JAMES, 1897, New Light on Burns, The Scottish Review, vol. 29, p. 306. |