Page images
PDF
EPUB

imagination, there is an understanding co-ordinate in activity and power, superadded to a wide and rich culture, free and flexible use of language, deep and extended study of men and things, keen and broad sympathy with universal nature, then we have a poet of the very highest order such a one as Shakspere himself. There is also another power, which although in itself it may not rank very high, and is wanting in such great poets as Milton, and Byron, and Wordsworth,-I mean the dramatic faculty,is a necessary element in poets of the highest kind, and is therefore pre-eminently possessed by Shakspere ;-that power by which the poet is enabled to sink his own personality, and speak and act as the different individual men would speak and act in their many-sided postures and conditions; not in his own name and nature, but as the voice of our varied humanity. Now, having answered, necessarily in a very general way, the questions, what is a poet, and what are the peculiar characteristics of the highest poets, we now come to the consideration of the third question-the place and powers of Burns as a poet.

In order to make a just estimate of the powers of the Scottish Burns, it may be the best way to contrast him with the English Shakspere; ascertain what qualities they have in common; discover their differences, whether in native power or in achievement. In placing before us the works of these two great poets, we are at once conscious of a near relationship in genius, and a wide disparity of accomplished work. Burns occasionally rises into the pure empyrean in which Shakspere soars at will, but his flights are short and seldom, just shewing his strength of wing, never breaking away in a wide and magnificent sweep. There is no production of Burns at all to be compared as a work with the dramas of Shakspere. Each of Burn's compositions we know was dashed off at a single rush, there were no sustained and lengthened efforts, no gradual growth and

expansion of thought, no building up of many ideas into a great and magnificent structure: whether from peculiarities of constitution, early education, harrassing labours, and distracting cares, we know not, but probably from all these causes combined, Burns flung off his fine inspirations, just when the spirit of poetry breathed upon him, and never sat down with calm and resolute determination to produce a studied work. We know that Burns thought about writing a drama founded on Scottish history; yet that was never carried into effect; the want of definite aim which weakened his character as a man, also crippled the efforts of the poet: and still further, when we consider that Burns rode two hundred miles a-week in the performance of his excise duties, and that all those duties were scrupulously fulfilled, there would be little time left him for literary labours. Burns' productions were thus fragmentary, minute and beautiful specimens, not magnificent and many-sided works. Burns has not the profundity, the comprehensiveness, the universality of Shakspere.

In reading the works of Burns, we are never, as we often are by Shakspere, startled into a strange sphere of thought, brought into the near neighbourhood of ideas, which our intellects cannot grasp, far less our tongues may utter; but which we somehow feel that at some point in our endless career we shall be able fully to comprehend and unravel. In reading Burns we are not, as we are in reading Shakspere, astonished at that vast comprehensive power of mind which swept along the horizon of human thought, and round the circuit of human experience. In reading Burns we are not, as we are in reading Shakspere, amazed at that universality of genius, which depicts natural and supernatural beings with such marvellous power and apparent truthfulness. In fine, the works of Burns are as islets rising out of the sea of Scottish thought-clear, distinct, and glorions; studded with many a proud peak, and threaded with many a rip

pling rill; tenanted with creatures of rare power and beauty, and filled with sounds of sweetest melody; yet restricted in variety of life, and limited in extent of boundary; and thus can be easily and speedily circumnavigated and explored. The works of Shakspere are as the great globe itself, including all continents, islands, broad rivers, and many-sounding seas; exhibiting innumerable varieties of life and scenery; filled with melodious voices, and floating amid the harmonies of the spheres: and as we wander along the margin of those far-stretching shores, we look out upon an unmeasured and untraversed ocean; we move along the outmost verge of the planet of human thought, and look upwards and downwards on a vast and unfathomed abyss. Although the genius of Burns has not the depth, the breadth, the richness of Shakspere; and though his works be limited in variety of life, and circumscribed in extent of territory; within the area of Scottish life, manners, and scenery, Burns is unapproached, inimitable. Burns has so caught the floating notes of Scottish melody, and wedded them to such matchless verse; has so seized the peculiar aspects of Scottish scenes, and the characteristic traits of Scottish character; has so laid hold of the most prominent points of the Scottish land, and the most glorious and most pregnant fact in Scottish history; that now Scotland is not so much the land of Ramsay, or Scott, or Knox, or Chalmers, far less the land of coroneted peer, or belted knight, as it is the land of Burns. And now and for evermore Robert Bruce and Robert Burns stand forth side by side the patriot prince and the patriot poet; the one having done the greatest deed recorded in Scottish annals, when on Bannockburn's gory and glorious field the liberties of Scotland were secured for ever; and the other in that spirit-stirring and matchless war-ode giving that proud deed worthy and immortal celebration.

"Wha will be a traitor knave,
Wha can fill a coward's grave,
Wha sae base as be a slave?

Let him turn and flee:

Wha for Scotland's king and law,
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or freeman fa'?
Let him follow me.

Robert Burns is at once the greatest Scottish poet, and the poet of our Scottish nationality. It has rarely happened in any country that the greatest has also been the national poet. In England it is not Shakspere, but mere song writers of inferior powers who directly touch and stir the people. To get a hold of a nation's heart it often needs, especially from feeble men, an exaggerated expression of the nation's peculiar thought or passion. In Shakspere we have many gleams of patriotic fire, unsurpassed in power and fervour; but there is in him such an admirable balance of faculty and feeling, that there is no prominent projection of any thought or sentiment; each and all are symmetrical segments of a complete circle, the proportionate rays of the perfect light; and further, his powers are so great and his culture so rich, that his sympathies are not merely national, but world-wide and universal.

Burns ranks very high over what may be called the national poets of England, and far beneath their greatest poet. Burns seems to me to have the very highest kind of genius compatible with the intensest national spirit. I know of no poet with mental calibre so great, with nationality so fervid. If Burns had possessed greater powers, and received a liberal training, he would still have been the greatest Scottish poet, but he might not have been the national poet of Scotland. The highest degree of faculty awanting, repressed by straitened circumstances, compressed by a narrow culture, his great powers were concentrated on his native Scotland, thus lifting the segment of Scottish characteristics out of the

circle of humanity, and surrounding them with the
glowing ray of patriotic feeling. Burns takes his place
midway between the greatest and the national poets,
partaking of the greatness of the one and the popu-
larity of the other, and hence the secret of his present,
and the certainty of his future fame. It was with
truth, as well as patriotic pride, that Burns addres-
ses a brother poet in words applicable not only to
his native Kyle, but also to his native Scotland:
"Auld Coila now may fidge fu fain,
She's gotten poet's o' her ain,

Chiels wha their chaunters winna hain,
But tune their lays

Till echoes a' resound again

Her weel-sung praise.

Nae poet thought her worth his while
To set her name in measured style,
She lay like some unkenn'd-of isle
Beside New Holland :

Or whar wild meeting oceans boil,
Besouth Magellan.

Th' Illissus, Tiber, Thames, an' Seine,
Glide sweet in many a tunefu' line;
But Willie, set your fit to mine
An' cock your crest,

We'll gar our streams an' burnies shine
Up wi' the rest.

Having thus stated what qualities of mind were apparently awanting in the genius of Burns as contrasted with Shakspere, the greatest poet of the highest order, and also shewn that Burns possessed in the strongest degree the spirit of nationality, exceeding the nationality of Shakspere, we shall now consider what qualities they had in common, as those are made known to us by their contemporaries, and manifested through their works. The most striking characteristics in the genius of Burns are, his activity of movement, his deep intense feeling, his genial humour, his power of insight and description, and his mastery over his native tongue. Those qualities Burns possessed in the highest degree, and within their ample range was the equal of the great

« EelmineJätka »