Chapter III (3)

The ideas of Currie have almost vanished with his times; still even yet we occasionally hear some small-souled cynic, some snail-shell philosopher, who thinks himself of those sages with whom wisdom is to perish, sneer scornfully at popular knowledge. Popular knowledge, it is true, is not the wisdom of Solomon; it has not the depth of Bacon, or the sublimity of Newton; still, so far as it goes, it is a good, and though the pedant may deride, the philanthropist will rejoice. And what, after all, is the ground of Mr. Pedant Wiseacre’s pride? Perhaps some learned investigation on the contraction of the Greek kai, or the tail of the Greek gamma. Seriously, the critic and the scholar, when true to their noble office, deserve our admiration and our gratitude; but those who grub merely for withered roots, which never produce either fruits or flowers; and, then, with insect vanity, give themselves airs of scorn, are themselves saved from contempt, only because all creatures have their uses. It is well for society that there should always be men of great and solid learning; and evil would be the day when slight acquirement should be a substitute for laborious thought; but it is also desirable that these accumulated treasures should be widely and bountifully distributed. It is good to have deep fountains in our munitions of rocks, but it is not good that these fountains should waste themselves in darkness; it is not good that they should merely feed the gorgeous river, and the mighty cataract, they should also steal along in the sunny streamlet, and give beauty to the secluded nook. Let there be rich men, and let them rejoice in their riches; let there be great men, and let them exult in their greatness; let there be men of strong intellect, but let them in their strength be merciful; it is not, however, the great, the noble, or the strong, that are ever of destructive nature; it was the lean kine of Egypt that became the devourers—and yet were as skinny as before; so there are poor, lean, hungry animals of the critic species—unproductive as they are voracious, that are naturally the most unsparing and the most ferocious.

When Burns went first to Edinburgh he was the rage, and homage to him became the cant of certain circles. But it is seldom that such homage survives a season. Poor Burns lived not long; but he lived long enough to understand in bitterness the hollowness of drawing-room applause. On a second visit to the Scottish metropolis, the enthusiasts of the first had disappeared. It is ridiculous enough now to us to think of any lord or lady of bedizened mediocrity supposing they could do honor by their notice to such a man as Robert Burns; but ridicule deepens to contempt, when we read of paltry provincials in Dumfries looking ascant at their mighty townsman, our indignation chokes our laughter at the record of treatment which small fashionables could offer to a great poet. Mr. Lockhart gives an anecdote from a gentleman who told him that he was seldom more grieved than when riding into Dumfries, one fine summer’s evening, to attend a country ball, he saw Burns walking alone on the shady side of the principal street of the town, while the opposite side was gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn together for the festivities of the night—not one of whom appeared willing to recognize him. The horseman dismounted and joined Burns, who, on his proposing to him to cross the street, said, “Nay, nay, my young friend, that’s all over now,” and quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizzle Baillie’s pathetic ballad.

Burns, amidst poverty and sorrow, when needful comforts had almost failed him in his sickness, and his children nearly wanted bread, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, quitted a world that was not soon to look upon his like again. Burns, the gladdener of so many hearts, was at last outwrestled, and the mighty fell—Burns, who had so deeply felt the rapture of genius, and the misery of life.

The retribution with which the errors of Burns chastised him, holds out impressive warning to all who are capable of drawing wisdom from example. If happiness could have found a resting-place in one of the most honest hearts that ever struck against a manly bosom; if happiness had been with noble poetry, with an eloquence that never failed, with an imagination rich as the breast of nature, and bright as the stars in heaven; if happiness could have been brought down from the sky by lofty and aspiring sentiments, or fixed upon earth by generous and gentle affections; then happiness would have been the lot of Burns. But Burns had contracted habits to which peace soon becomes a stranger; and he who has such habits, be he bard, or be he beggar, has already entered on the evil day; he may say in all the bitterness of his soul, “Farewell the tranquil mind.” It would seem as if Burns pictured by anticipation his own sad fate when he wrote the Bard’s Epitaph. “Whom did the poet intend?” asks Wordsworth, as quoted by Allan Cunningham, “who but himself—himself anticipating the too probable termination of his own course. Here is a sincere and solemn avowal—a public declaration from his own will—a confession at once devout, poetical and human—a history in the shape of a prophesy!” What more was required of the biographer than to have put his seal to the writing, testifying that the foreboding had been realized, and the record was authentic.

Is there a whim-inspired fool,
Owre fast for thought, or hot to rule,
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool,
Let him draw near;
And owre this grassy heap sing dool,
And drap a tear.

Is there a bard of rustic song,
Who, noteless, steals, the crowds among,
That weekly this area throng,
O, pass not by,
But with a frater-feeling strong,
Here heave a sigh.

Is there a man whose judgment clear,
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs himself life’s mad career,
Wild as the wave;
Here pause, and through the starting tear,
Survey this grave.

The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn, and wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow,
And softer flame,
But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stained his name.

Reader, attend, whether thy soul
Soars fancy’s flights beyond the pole,
Or darkly grubs this earthly hole,
In low pursuit,
Know prudent, cautious, self-control
Is wisdom’s root.

Thus much I thought I might venture on our poet’s life; I shall now proceed to offer some remarks upon his genius.

Burns was a true child of nature; thence his growing power, and thence the promise of his lasting fame. But though the child of nature, he was not the offspring of mere rude or uncultivated nature. The Scottish peasantry were a class of men among whom such a mind as that of Burns could perhaps receive its most fitting development. Without the refinement which tends to repress spontaneous expression, they had sufficient of moral and intellectual education to give that expression variety and strength. Their country, their history, and their religion, were all such as to train a serious and reflective imagination. Therefore it is that no peasantry have furnished so much to national literature as the Scottish, and especially to national poetry. Within a period by no means extensive in their annals, they have given to the world such writers as Ferguson, simple and full of music; Allan Ramsay, in his “Gentle Shepherd,” the very genius of pastoral poetry; Tannahill, a lowly spirit of melody and pathos, a sweet voice of truth and tenderness; Hogg, the glorious wizard of the mountains, coming down from his shepherd’s wilderness, his memory peopled with all olden legends, and his fancy teeming with all fairy dreams. Burns, then, though mightiest, is but one of an honorable family; though greatest and grandest among them, they are his kindred; of some he is the heir, of others, he is the progenitor.

Burns is a poet true, as I have said, to nature, and therefore true to art. Burns is not mechanically artificial, but he is patiently artistical. He had none of that indolent vanity which shrinks from careful preparation, which trusts all to sudden excitement, and undigested emotions. He looked, as every man of genius does, to the ideal; he knew it was not to be comprehended in a passing glance, or reached in a rapid bound, or embodied in a single effort; and he knew that in the endeavor to unfold it, no execution could be too thoughtful, and no labor too great. It is not the consciousness of power, but the conceit of vanity, which relies presumptuously upon momentary impulse, which mistakes the contortions of a delirious imbecility for the movements of celestial agitation. The very creation of God, which required but the will and word of Omnipotence for instant and perfect existence, has been gradually constructed—the earth on which we stand, so fair to look upon, so robed with beauty, so radiant with life and light, has been evolved from chaos through innumerable formations and even the thunder so astounding in its crash, and the lightning so sudden in its stroke, have long been generating in the womb of heaven. The man of genius, the man of creative power, is at once inspired and industrious; at once a man of passion and a man of patience; at once a constructor and analyser, a man of enthusiasm, but also a man of wisdom. Genius is not intoxication, and it is even more than rapture; it is capacity subject to the law of truth and beauty; the intense action of the soul, exalted, harmonious, and illuminated. The dash of noble thoughts may come suddenly on the brain; the torrent of enkindled feeling may rush upon the heart, but the spirit of order and of art must move over the face of this brilliant chaos, ere it is shaped into that perfection which the world does not willingly let die. All mighty souls know this; the rustic Burns knew it, not less than the godlike Milton.

The genius of Burns is now, by that instinctive appreciation which forms the supreme tribunal, placed in the highest order. Whence is this? All he has written may be contained in a moderately sized volume. If quantity of production therefore were needed to exalt a writer, which it is not, Burns should remain in the region of mediocrity. Neither has he composed as critics would seem to require, a work of elaborate and faultless excellence; for he has not even attempted a tragedy or an epic poem. But critics cannot decide this point, and that common heart which decides for all has decided for Burns. The depth and extent of his humanity has gained him his distinction, and it is that humanity which gains distinction for any who outlive their age. It is this spirit of love and sympathy which evinces the kindred that all men recognize; it is this spirit that reaches the truth of nature below all changes, custom and convention; below all colors which climates paint upon the skin; it is this which outlives all facts and fashions, and abides forever in the immortal heart. Whoever has this spirit must live; whoever has it not must die; whoever has this spirit must live, defiled though he may be with many evils; whoever has it not must die, no matter how excellent he may be besides; no matter what his brilliancy, his sagacity, his talent, the generations will outlast them all; will give them to as deep oblivion as they do the tongues of Babel. The world cherishes Boccacio, notwithstanding the offences of his tales; so it likewise preserves Chaucer; Rabelais and old Montaigne continue in literature despite of their impurities; and to think of Shakspeare dying would be to conceive the extinction of letters or our race. All these men are deathless brothers, and Burns is amongst them. His poetry is thoroughly human; a poetry which reproduces as we read it all the feelings of our wayward nature; which shows how man was made to be merry, and how he was made to mourn; which enters the soul on its sunny or its gloomy side, expands the heart with laughter or chastens it with melancholy.

In knowledge of man, Burns strikes us with wonder unspeakable, when we consider the narrow circle in which he lived, and the early age at which he died. A single song is like a compressed drama; and within the circle of these songs we have impulses from every stage of life, from the perturbations of youth to the chill of age. To every shade of sentiment and affection; to every change and turn of inward experience, to every oddity and comicality of feeling, he has given a voice of musical and energetic utterance.

Man, and man directly—man in the play of all his passions, is, with Burns, the great object of interest. The descriptive and the picturesque for their own sake have therefore no place in his writings. A picture with him is never more than the drapery of a passion. The chivalric past has none of his veneration; and the past, in any form, only kindles him when he associates it with the movements of humanity or the struggles of liberty. The conflicts of feudalism, the rivalry of dynasties, the gorgeous falsehoods of departed ages, had no enchantment to warm his fancy or to rule his pen. In this respect, the writings of Scott and those of Burns are as opposite as are their characters. The brilliancy of descriptive narrative glows over the poems of Scott—the strong life of passion throbs in those of Burns. Even in the record of a tour this contrast is observable. Scott has the eye of an antiquarian and a map-maker united. Burns glances along as if space were a tiresome obstruction to his fiery nature: Scott surveys every baronial castle, and notes all its chronicles. Burns raves with inspired fury on the field where the invader was struck down, where “tyrants fell in every blow.” Scott imagined that genius owed homage to rank; Burns gave the obligation another version, and conceived that rank should do reverence to genius. Peasant-born, he was too proud in his humanity to covet titles: almost morbidly jealous of individual independence, hereditary aristocracy was not to him poetically impressive; its outward glare provoked his scorn, and its deeper abuses sickened his imagination.

Two most _human_ qualities in all poets are pre-eminent in Burns—I mean pathos and humor.

His pathos is profound but kindly. No writer is less gloomy than Burns, and yet none for the extent of his compositions has more pathos. No writer within the same compass has grander thoughts or deeper beauty; and, by some magic of the heart, grand thoughts and deep beauty are always allied to melancholy. The canopy of the blue heavens, when not a cloud swims in its brightness, makes our rapture sad: so it does when the stars stud it with ten thousand lights: the mountain’s majesty and the ocean’s vastness subdue our souls to thought, and in this world of ours thought has ever something of the hue of grief. It would seem as if a mysterious connection existed between great objects and pensive feelings, between lofty sentiments and deep regrets, a kind of struggle in our higher nature against the limits of its condition: a disappointment at the long interval that separates our aspirations from the ideal, tinges with sorrow all our sensations of the beautiful. Pathos such as this imbues all the graver poetry of Burns. Scarcely is there a wo which wrings the bosom between the cradle and the grave which has not an expression in the solemn music of his verse, from the gentlest whisper of feeling to the frenzies of every pain and the agonies of every passion. But though deep, his melancholy is not morbid. It is the melancholy of great capacities and of real suffering; of error reacting on itself a just infliction; or glorious desires yearning for their congenial objects. The muse of Burns was a rustic maiden; a maiden healthful and hardy. Fits of vapors she might occasionally have, but the heather of her native mountains soon restored the elasticity of her step, and the breeze of her pleasant valleys quickly recalled the bloom to her cheek and the lustre to her eye. At times she sought the solitudes; but she returned ere long to human homes, and sang her wild and simple songs to the friendly circle. She loved, it is true, to meditate under the green shadow of the forest, and to look up in raptured spirit to the lurid and darkened heavens; but she loved no less the blessed sunshine on the harvest hill, and the cottage smoke that floated in the evening sky. If occasionally she wept amidst the graves of her heroes, she came from the places of the dead, more boldly to proclaim liberty in the places of the living.

This pathos is neither maudlin nor misanthropic. It does not make the head giddy with paradox; nor whirl the heart upon a wild and chaotic tempest of doubt and selfishness; it does not dissect out the evils of human nature, and gloat over them with a diseased voluptuousness; it does not lead you to sit at the feast of despair, with the spectres and skeletons around you of unsocial horrors. It is no mawkish pretence of sentiment. Burns is true to what he feels; and, right or wrong, he speaks it as it is. He maintains this course in his good and his evil. It saved him from groveling and bombast; it saved him from intellectual cant, and from literary quackery. No language is so eloquent as honest language. Truth goes direct to its purpose, while affectation is crawling around its petty circumlocutions; and, as the straight line is the shortest, the most sincere words are the most resistless. As the poet had honesty in himself, he had faith in others. His appeal was weakened by no skepticism in the capacity of humble men to appreciate the noble and the beautiful. He spoke to them as beings whose hearts were of the same substance as his own; he spoke confident of the result, and he was not disappointed. The first auditors of his verses were the obscure dwellers among Scottish hills and hamlets, and to his words he received as true a response as poetic enthusiasm could have desired. The sons and daughters of toil proved to him, that he had not trusted them in vain. He gave them his faith, and they paid back the trust with a priceless love.

I have said that the pathos of Burns is not morbid—and I have said truly. In its lowest depths, it is not dark—in the uttermost sadness, it is not despairing. He grieves, but he never whines; and when he utters forth tones the most plaintive, they are yet so vigorous and so full, that, by the strong sound of them, you feel that they come out from the stalwort struggle of a manly bosom. He has pathos, too, of every variety. He has the pathos of sympathy—and this sympathy is often so intense, as to amount to a passionate indignation. As thus, in the poem—“_Man was made to Mourn_:”—

Many and sharp, the numerous ills—
Interwoven with our frame!
More pointed still we make ourselves,
Regret, remorse, and shame.
And Man, whose heaven-created face,
The smiles of love adorn,
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.

This is a large and noble eloquence, condensed into a soul-fraught poetry; yet is it but one out of the many stanzas of which the whole consists, of equal power. So, likewise, he has the pathos of pity, of tenderness, in their finest modulations. The chords of his own heart were most delicately attuned to “the soft, sad music of humanity;” and the breathings of its sorrow were of that genuine humanity, to which other hearts cannot but respond. How much of such pitiful gentleness have we constantly in his poetry, often coming near to gusts of anger—like the song of a mourner in a stormy midnight—or, the moan of the tempest after its rush. But sometimes we have low and melancholy plaints, without one tone of harshness, in such exquisite verses, as those on “The Mouse,” and “The Mountain Daisy”—in “Poor Mailie’s Elegy”—and “The Farmer’s Address to the Old Mare on New Year’s Day.” Illustrations of this point are in all his writings, prose as well as poetry; but I will only mention one other—his “Lines on a Wounded Hare.” Burns has, in an eminent degree, the pathos which springs from contemplation of our mortal life; and not less, that which comes from those solemn questionings of the spirit, to which experience and the Past, give only accusing answers. A man of genius may do wrong; he may lose himself in the mazes of the passions; he may forget himself in the excitement and turbulence of the senses—but all this is at a deadlier cost than it is to any other man. Let no puny-copyist of genius only in its errors and its wanderings, doubly deceive himself—first, by supposing that he _has_ genius, and then, more fatally, deceive himself by inferring that genius has impunity. True, it is, that genius, like charity, covereth a multitude of sins—and for the delight and the beauty which a great soul showers upon the world, the world does abundantly forgive. But, genius does not forgive itself. A strong moral sensibility—though, it may be, not strong moral principle—is mostly a concomitant—if not an essential element—in the nature of a man of genius, and, therefore, when such a man does violence to his higher sentiments, his very genius becomes his punishment. The grandeur of his ideal—the innate love that he must have to the good and to the beautiful—the extent of his moral associations—the tenacity of his moral memories—the vitality of his imagination, calling back again, and back again, the thoughts which had only disappeared, but were not dead—all conspire to chastise him, and to chastise him by the faculties which enchant and move the world. The depth and the compass of his sympathies afflict him; and, as the fountains of thought and feeling are full within him, so much the greater are the agitations that shake him. These remarks concern mainly those men of genius whose nature is that of a comprehensive humanity. Men there have been, and are, that might be adduced to contradict the position I have ventured here to take: for they were capable of much that was unworthy—and yet they did not suffer or repent. Some were deniers, and some were sensualists—the deniers had fine art, and the sensualists had fine sentiments—and all were men of genius. I have no reply to make, except that, in such men, their genius, as their humanity, was of partial, though intense development; and that such was a class to which Burns did not belong. He was neither a denier nor a sentimentalist. He was a _man_—take him for all in all—and he was a poet in the whole compass of the _man_. The man spoke through the poet, not in gladness only, but, also, in every note of sorrow and compunction. What sombre power in his Ode to Despondency.

Oppressed with grief, oppressed with care,
A burden more than I can bear,
I sit me down and sigh:
O life! thou art a galling load,
Along a rough, a weary road,
To wretches such as I!
Dim, backward, as I cast my view,
What sick’ning scenes appear!—
What sorrows yet may pierce me through,
Too justly, I may fear!
Still caring, despairing,
Must be my bitter doom;
My woes here, shall close ne’er,
But with the closing tomb.

See this again, in the affection with which he loved the sombre phases of external nature, and the force with which he painted them. Thus he meditates in Winter:

The sweeping blast—the sky o’ercast—
The joyless winter-day,
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May:
The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul,
My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please—
Their fate resembles mine.

Then passing from this low-breathing despondency, we have lyric tragedy shouting down despair in a kind of reckless ecstacy. Bold and brave is this “Song of Death:”

Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth, and ye skies,
Now gay with the bright setting sun;
Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear tender ties,
Our race of existence is run.
Thou grim King of Terrors—thou life’s gloomy foe—
Go, frighten the coward and slave;
Go, teach _them_ to tremble, fell tyrant! but know,
No terrors hast thou to the brave!

In the pathos of love Burns has no superior. What poet in ancient or modern times, short of Shakspeare, has sung with more varied inspiration than Burns, the agitations with which love convulses the heart of man, and breaks the heart of woman? In a few compressed, but simple-meaning lines, he reveals the passion in all its regrets and agony. And here also, we can see the force, the simplicity—the vehement sincerity of his poetry: and we can see exactly the same characteristics in his life. Allan Cunningham, in his biography of Burns, tells a very affecting anecdote, which I may here fairly adduce in illustration. Jean Armor was lying ill in the house of her parents. Burns had arranged to quit the country for ever, but wanted, once before he left, to see his Jean. Burns attempted to go into the house, but her father stood in the door to exclude him. Burns, maddened by his grief, pushed the old man aside, rushed up to his daughter’s chamber, and throwing himself across the bed, wept as if his heart would burst. And, with regard to his verses to “Mary in Heaven,” if any thing could be more pathetic, than the verses themselves, it was the circumstances in which he composed them. It is now familiar to all who read the least of literary history, that this sublimely pathetic ode, was composed on the anniversary of the maiden’s death, while the poet lay abroad in the field during a bright harvest night, recalling the images of past affections, and out from this dream of the wakeful and troubled heart came that dirge of music which the noblest humanity inspired, and which the rudest humanity must love. It is so familiar to every one, that I will not dare to profane it, by repetition. But here are a few lines of a song, lyrical with all the melody of sadness.

Ae fond kiss and then we sever!
Ae farewell—alas, forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I’ll pledge thee—
Wailing sighs and groans I’ll wage thee—
Who shall say that fortune grieves him—
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.
. . . . .
Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never lovéd blindly,
Never met—or never parted,
We had ne’er been broken-hearted.

The humor of Burns, too, is full of humanity. It is affluent with all the rich and laughing juices of the heart, and has only just so much of acid as adds pungency to sweetness. Burns has the humor most characteristic of his country; but beyond that, he has a humor belonging to himself—a humor which, while it distinguishes the individual, endears him to his kind. In common with his countrymen, he has the cautious innuendo—the sly allusion—the insinuated sarcasm—the shrewd but mocking suggestion—the implied irony—the dextrously concealed and quiet fun—the sober joke—but he goes beyond all this—and has a humor—which can make men of every nation shake their sides—a humor that often unites the broadness of Rabelais with the sentiment of Sterne. Such a humor demands not only extraordinary wealth of imagination, but also, extraordinary force of intellect—a very uncommon fancy and a very strong common sense. And, it was the union of these in Burns which so well enabled him to be at once comic and satirical—which enabled him so happily to combine the sarcastic and the ludicrous—and he does this in such a way, that while his victims writhe before us, we discern no malignity in their torturer. But, it is in jocund, queer, joyous humor—humor reckless in its gladness, that Burns the most excels. In this species of humor he has scarcely an equal. Few of the greatest masters in humor come near him; and in what we may call the comic-lyric, he stands almost alone. The humor that makes richest melody in the heart; that sings for very joy; that by every note in which laughter can sing out its ecstacy—swells the choruses of mirth and merriment—the humor that is a jubilee in the bosom, that gives widest liberty to fancy—a saturnalia, in which no thought of care or labor, dares intrude—a carnival, in which all kindly oddities of conception play their parts—a humor that combines imagination and feeling into numberless bright varieties, to exhilarate our life—of this humor, Burns in his laughing moods is the potent wizard—of this enlivening magic his gayer songs are the resistless spells.

This humor, too, is generously and jovially human, and although Burns’ ridicule is often coarse, it is rarely cruel. He strikes, but it is with the arm of a man, and not with the blasting of a fiend. Gall he does sometimes mingle with the cup of satire, but never the deadly night-shade; the barb he sharpens keenly, but he does not steep it in poison. He painted, it is true, with a breadth and richness of coloring that made men hold their sides and set the table in a roar, the fooleries and absurdities of individuals; the pretensions of sects, and the bitterness of factions; the vanities of professions; the motley trivialities of presumptuous and stolid nonsense; but in the very storm of his sarcasm, he spares our common nature. There is a ridicule which properly may be called diabolical; which desecrates every thing endeared and noble; which laughs not in festivity of spirit, but in bitterness of heart; which like the witches in Macbeth, around the midnight cauldron, shrieks in the irony of satanic mirth over the degradation of humanity. This temper is realized in the writings of Swift, and affected in those of Byron; but we discover no trace of it in the compositions of Burns. Burns would give even to Satan himself the grace of repentance, and a chance of heaven. Burns, like Byron, can pass rapidly from the grave to the grotesque, but altogether in a different spirit. In the one it is the prodigality of fun; in the other it is willfulness of scorn; in the one, it is sport; in the other it is derision; the one as friend to friend mocks humanity pleasantly; the other makes it a Sancho Panza, tosses it in a blanket, and laughs the louder, the more it is humiliated. I believe the spirit of Byron was naturally a fine one; but it was spoiled, if not utterly ruined, as to all its higher capacities and sympathies. I say not that his moral humanity was extinguished, because that would be uncandid; but I do say, that he became fantastic and capricious to such a degree as to fail in the charities which not only soften life, but dignify literature.

Attributing humor to Burns, I do not estimate it as the slight matter which many seem to think it. If we trust some persons, we should conceive that length of face was length of wisdom, gravity of look, the veil of oracles; thickness of skull the safeguard of knowledge; and rigidity of muscle, the solemn surface of an unfathomable philosophy. But humor in its higher form is the quality, not only of a liberal, but of a cultivated spirit. It requires that the mental powers be vigorous as well as genial. It requires imagination and intellect, as well as a heart in the right place, and the juices of the body in a good condition. Humor as well as pathos is the result of sympathy—of sympathy that embraces man in the most brotherly cordiality—weeps with those who weep, and rejoices with those who do rejoice. This is the humor of Shakspeare; it is the humor of Hogarth; it is the humor of Burns. And many a noble use has this honest faculty—often is it more effective than sermons, to make life lambent, to clear the sky, that was becoming too heavy around us, to warm social intercourse, to nurture our socialities, to dissipate evil passions, and by its pleasant mockeries, to shame us out of nonsensical miseries.

Time would now fail me to refer to the poetry of Burns with any special detail; but for pages so well known, a few brief reminiscences will be sufficient. How full of beauty is “The Vision,” the poem in which, with a self-conscious greatness, almost Miltonic, he celebrates his own consecration to the glory of his country; we read it in delight, in wonder, and with sorrow, and with joy; we verily admit, that, “the light which led astray was light from heaven.” With what solemn pleasure we recall the “Cottar’s Saturday Night.” No other poem in the language shows how much the eye of a poet can see, how much the heart of a poet can feel, where another heart is dull, and another eye is blind. To the prosaic nothing familiar is exciting, but to the inspired all existence is full of glory. Here upon a cottage floor we have placed before us, the most pure, and the most noble virtues; the piety that looks to heaven; the patriotism that dignifies earth; here we have the father returned from his toil, with his “wee things” circling his knees, his clean hearth stone; his “thrifty wifie’s” smile; his soul made glad with Sabbath hopes and with holy thoughts; here are brothers and sisters gathered from the work-day world around the parents that shielded, and that blessed their infancy; here are the pleasant face, and the heart’s own smile; here the homely feast with a joy which luxury refuses, and a gratitude which no luxury inspires; here is first love with maiden blushes, shames and fears; here are all the sublimities of the affections, all in the shades of unnoticed life. How noble is that father and that peasant-priest, as he bares his “haffit locks,” and “let us worship God he says with solemn air;”

Then kneeling down to Heaven’s eternal King—
The _saint_, the _father_, and the husband prays—
Hope “springs exultant on triumphant wings,”
That thus they all shall meet in future days:
Thus ever bask in uncreated rays—,
No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their _Creator’s_ praise,
In such society, yet still more dear;
While circling time moves round in on eternal sphere.

Compared with this, how poor! religion’s pride
In all the pomp of method and of art,
When men display to congregations wide,
Devotion’s every grace, except the _heart_!
The _Power_ incensed, the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;
But haply, in some _Cottage_, far apart,
May hear well pleased the language of the soul,
And in his _Book of life_ the inmates poor enroll!

And how exalted that love of country which utters this fine supplication:

O Scotia, my dear, my native soil,
For whom my warmest wish to heaven is sent,
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
Be blest with health, and pence, and sweet content.
And O, may heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury’s contagion weak and vile,
Then, howe’er crowns end coronets be rent,
A virtuous populace will rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire round their much loved isle.

The spirit of hilarity has never been so admirably blended with the gloomy and the tender, as in the tale of “Tam O’Shanter.” Heroic and immortal Tam will stand his ground while the name of witch or warlock has a place in language. This marvelous mixture of fun and fancy; this chronicle of midnight revelry; this record of wit and waggery, of good fellowship and ghosts, has now a lodgment in every mind that relishes drollery and genius. Here we have the sublime with the ludicrous; images most delicate with images most homely; subtle analogies with grotesque incongruities; touches of sorrow with strokes of glee; all coming in such rapid succession, that, while the broad grin is on the lip, the tear is starting to the eye. “The Jolly Beggars” gives us the very saturnalia of low life; jovial poverty frolics away in the full abandonment of extravagance, dashed over, however, here and there, with those shadings of regret which obtrude the sadness of life, when men try to forget it most. The “Halloween,” pictures the poor man’s carnival, such as it used to be in Scotland, with all its superstitions and its sports. “The twa Dogs,” is a genial exposition of the poor man’s philosophy. The dog of wealth, laying aside his master’s pride in his master’s absence, meets the peasant dog with very kindly courtesy; and both sitting tranquilly on their haunches, with nose to nose, and most sagacious phizzes, discuss the comparative merits of riches and poverty, pity the folly of their two-legged fellow creatures, congratulate each other on their canine superiority, and bless their stars for being dogs instead of men. Cæsar, the dog of high life, with an air of peculiar respectability and most complacent compassion, wonders how poor folks can live at all. Luath, his humble friend, knows that poor folks not only live, but live with very many pleasures; and this Luath was a dog of sympathy; he shared the cottage sorrow; he shared also the cottage joy; he rattled away among the dancers; wagged his tail in the highest glee of his honest heart, and gave his chorus to the merry sound. When adversity was on the hearth, his face grew long; when better times returned, it was broad again.

My heart hae been sae fain to see them
That I for joy hae barkit wi them.

The whole of this poem is fraught with the noblest and the most endearing humanity—a humanity most varied and most musical in its tones—running quickly along all the chords of sadness and of merriment, throwing forth a harmony of charity and heart-breathing kindness, in which grave sounds and gay mingle together, but not one vibration ungenial or discordant. That Burns should give to dogs sentiments thus characteristic of a sweet and generous temper, corresponds entirely to the feelings with which he regarded that animal, as illustrated in a passage which I have lately found, taken from a newspaper.

The following original anecdote of Burns is in a work entitled the “Philosophy of the Seasons,” by Rev. Henry Duncan:

“I well remember with what delight I listened to an interesting conversation which, while yet a school-boy, I enjoyed an opportunity of hearing in my father’s manse, between the poet Burns and another poet, my near relation, the amiable Blacklock. The subject was the fidelity of the dog. Burns took up the question with all the ardor and kindly feeling with which the conversation of that extraordinary man was so remarkably embued. It was a subject well suited to call forth his powers, and when handled, by such a man, not less suited to interest the youthful fancy. The anecdotes by which it was illustrated have long escaped my memory; but there was one sentiment expressed by Burns with his characteristic enthusiasm which, as it threw a light into my mind, I shall never forget. “Man,” said he, “is the God of the dog. He knows no other; he can understand no other; and see how he worships him! With what reverence he couches at his feet; with what love he fawns upon him, with what dependence he looks up to him, and with what cheerful alacrity he obeys him. His whole soul is wrapped up in his God; and the powers and faculties of his nature are devoted to his service; and these powers and faculties are exalted by the intercourse. It ought just to be so with the Christian: but the dogs put the Christians to shame.”

It is thus, that the spirit of human love, the truest element of poetic beauty, can ennoble and consecrate all it touches; it is thus that Burns elevates the most lowly objects; the farmer’s mare, proud in her age and services; the little cowering mouse, houseless and frightened; the dying ewe; the wounded hare; the simple daisy; rustic sweethearts and rustic beggars; all were endeared to his generous imagination, and over them, while words have meaning, there will be laughing eyes, and serious faces.

Burns has been great in whatever poetry he attempted, but in lyric poetry, he is greatest of all. The songs of Burns, in every point of view, are truly wonderful compositions. We are at a loss which most to admire, their number and variety, or their individual perfection. The lyre of Burns incessantly changes its tone, and in every change it throws forth a flood of new inspiration. Great indeed is the task to give poetic and condensed expression to those thousand impulses that ever heave within us, and are evanescent as the ocean wave; to furnish fitting words for the ideal and fervid longings which millions feel, but cannot utter for themselves; to embody in lasting form, innumerable and undefined desires; to touch chord after chord of memory and emotion, and to awaken the divine music that slumbers in the soul; in a word, to give melody and speech to the complicated heart of man: great is the task, but Burns has accomplished it.

Burns—great in sadness and great in humor; so human in his melancholy, so loving in his laughter. When we hear the pleasant peal of his hearty mirth, our bosoms dilate, until we could embrace our species in affection. When, changing his tone, we feel the breath of his indignation or listen to his cry against oppression, our pulse beats quicker and our blood flows faster. Burns, bard of the brave and fervent soul, destined to move humanity as long as language shall endure; as long as the love of liberty, of independence, of fearless honesty, or patriotic courage, shall have a refuge in our world.

Burns is a nobleman of nature;—a man for the toilsmen of earth to look upon and hope. In humble, rustic life, under the thatched roof, which gave the peasant his shelter; in the field where the heir of labor in the sweat of his brow fulfilled the original destiny of man, Burns fed inspired thoughts, and laid the foundation of a deathless fame. True, his life was short in years; but how passing long was it in emotions, in capacious and crowded fancies. His spirit was goaded, no doubt, with the vulgar cares of poverty, and the worse results of passion; but it was glorified also with conscious genius; he could retreat from the vexations of the world to the sanctuary of his enriched imagination, and there, amidst all the evils of his outward condition, he could find in poetry its own exceeding great reward. Through all the sorrows that overspread his short but rapid course; amidst all the clouds that hung heavily over his path, glimpses of joy were ever and anon bursting on his enraptured eye, which it is given only to the favored ones to behold. And who would not, if he could, have a soul so adorned with the beautiful, rather than without it, be overburdened with the load of external fortune? Had Burns been merely a man of title, he had been forgotten as all titled dust since the days of Nimrod; as unknown as the dukes of Edom; a pompous funeral and a lying epitaph would have given him to oblivion. As it is, the recollection of him is garnered in the choicest corners of the heart, and his name is linked forever to the music of sweetest sounds.

I am now at the close of my task. I have gone through it lovingly, and with reverence; sensible along the way of much goodness in my subject, and not forgetful, either, of some evil also. That many faults are in the compositions of Burns, I apprehend most clearly; and that sad irregularities were in his life, it requires small trial of candor to confess; but to have spread them out in ostentatious commentary would have served no purpose of this article, and gratified no desire of the reader. I am not blind to those errors; I propose no excuse; I deprecate no just condemnation, and I have been forbearing from no moral indifference, no moral insensibility. But dealing with the memory of genius, I reflected that the _man_ was before his God, and the _poet_ had met the sentence of the world. For wisdom, or for warning, the events of his life are sufficiently familiar—he that runs may read, their moral meaning let him read and ponder—let him learn, and let him be better. But I have no sympathy with that vampire-like spirit which disentombs the faults of the illustrious dead to feed the nauseous appetites of itself or others; I tread upon the grave with caution and compassion; and while I do not regard genius as repealing the law of virtue, neither do I regard it as beyond the law of mercy. We need, all of us, great tenderness from those who surround us; we need much, too, from those who survive us. If we require charity from men, who give them nothing, let us grant it to those who have enriched us, and enriched the ages. In the noble and eloquent verses of Halleck, we, too, say of Burns:

His is the language of the heart,
In which the answering heart would speak;
Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start,
Or the smile light the cheek.
And his, the music, to whose tone
The common pulse of man keeps time,
In cot or castle’s mirth or moan,
In cold or sunny clime.
. . . . . .
Praise to the bard, his words are driven,
Like flower seed by the far wind sown,
Where’er beneath the sky of heaven
The birds of fame have flown.
Praise to the man! a nation stood
Beside his coffin with wet eyes,
Her brave, her beautiful, her good,
As when a loved one dies.
And still, as on his funeral day,
Men stand his cold earth-couch around,
With the mute homage that we pay
To consecrated ground.
And consecrated ground it is
The last, the hallowed home of one,
Who lives upon all memories,
Though with the buried gone.
Such graves as his, are pilgrim shrines,
Shrines to no creed or sect confined,
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind.

* * * * *

THE GAMBLER’S DAUGHTER.

BY HENRY C. MOORHEAD.

If the reader has ever passed along the banks of the Susquehanna, or floated down its waters, he has not failed to admire the beautiful _coves_ which are here and there formed by the bending hills on either side. With a mountain border sweeping round in the shape of a half moon, and the river flowing in a straight line in front, these terrestrial crescents form a series of most charming landscapes. In one of the most charming of them all lived an old gentleman whom we shall call Richard Parkett.

Many years before the period of the following incidents, the wife of Mr. Parkett had died, committing to his care with her dying words, an infant daughter. They called her, after her mother, Lucy; she grew up like a wild flower in her sequestered home, and, at the time we speak of, was just budding into womanhood. And surely no opening rose could be more lovely. The bloom of health was on her cheek; her step was free and elastic as that of the fawn on the neighboring mountain, and her spirits as bounding and joyous as those of the birds which “warbled their native wood-notes wild” around her dwelling.

“My child,” said Mr. Parkett, to her one day, “there is to be an arbitration in the neighborhood to-morrow, to settle some matters in dispute between myself and a neighbor, and we will need you for a witness.”

“For a witness—what does that mean?”

“Why they will make you swear a terrible oath to tell the truth,” said the old gentleman, smiling affectionately; “and then two or three lawyers will endeavor to puzzle you so as to prevent your doing it.”

“And who are these puzzling lawyers?”

“One of them, whose particular business it will be to puzzle you if he can, is a young man named Burton.”

“Burton?—Sidney Burton? He is the young gentleman who called here last winter to see you on business, is he not?”

“Really, you seem to have an excellent memory for young gentlemen’s names.”

Lucy blushed slightly, but made no answer. However, she was much more sober and thoughtful than usual all that day.

The arbitration came on, and Lucy was sworn as a witness. Her story was short and simple, and referred merely to a conversation which she had heard, and about which the parties could not now agree. As Burton was counsel on the other side, he then proceeded to cross-examine her. It was of great importance to his cause that he should shake her confidence in what she had said; and he therefore proceeded (with great delicacy, however) to ply her with an infinite variety of perplexing questions.

But, although she was artless as a child, her quick apprehension, and her clear, ready answers filled him with admiration; which was not at all diminished by an occasional volley of mischievous satire which raised a smile at his expense. He even continued the examination for some time after he saw that it was useless, for the pleasure it afforded him. At length, all parties being satisfied, the dispute was amicably settled, and Mr. Parkett invited the company to his house.

Nothing could have pleased Burton better than such an invitation; he wished to see more of this charming witness, and to present himself before her under more favorable circumstances than in a cross-examination. Lucy, on her part, was equally pleased with this arrangement, for Burton’s image had never ceased to haunt her imagination since the day she had first casually seen him at her father’s house some months before. She could not explain the mystery to herself, but she felt an indefinable interest in every thing that concerned him, and her heart beat warm and quick at the sound of his voice.

On the following morning Burton was urged to stay a day longer, and join a fishing excursion which had been projected. He readily consented; the necessary “tacklings” were soon collected; the party embarked in two canoes, and Burton found himself in one of these small and crazy vessels with Lucy, a young gentleman, her cousin, being in one end to direct its course. Some distance above was one of those “falls” which in so many places obstruct the navigation of that beautiful river, but which furnish among their rocks the most excellent of fishing grounds. Hugging the shore until they had passed above the rapids, they proceeded to drop their boats down upon those rocks which were known to furnish the finest eddies. The current was rapid, and the young man who was steering the boat in which we are chiefly interested, in attempting suddenly to change its course, lost his balance, and fell headlong into the water. The boat swung rapidly round, and, being borne sideways among the breakers, soon capsized. Lucy and Burton both disappeared beneath the foaming torrent; but our hero quickly rose, and, being an expert swimmer, watched eagerly for the appearance of Lucy; then grasping her dress, he buffeted the waves with a strong arm, and succeeded in landing her safely on a rock which projected above the water. To his inexpressible alarm, she seemed to be entirely helpless and inanimate. He commenced chafing her forehead, when in a few minutes she opened her eyes, and the crimson tide of life bounded into her face, neck, and bosom. She stood up and looked anxiously round for her father. In a few minutes the other canoe approached, (having first picked up the young man who had occasioned the accident,) and the whole party immediately returned home.

What more could be wanting to bring these two young hearts together. This romantic little incident sealed their fate; and although their tongues were yet silent, their eyes spoke eloquently of love. On the following morning Burton departed, but he soon returned; and at length the good people of the neighborhood began to wonder whether it was arbitrations that brought the young lawyer so often amongst them.