in england “the bard” stands for shakespeare; in scotland, of course, when you say “the bard” you mean robert burns. nothing that scotland ever possessed has abided so firmly in the heart of the scotchman as “the bard”—robert burns, that is to say. an englishman can forget that shakespeare ever existed. a scotsman never forgets that robert burns was a scotchman. morn, noon, and night he will talk to you of burns if you give him half a chance. till dr. j. m. barrie and dr. crockett came in, the scotchman had no other book but a dog’s-eared burns, from which work he gathered his views of life, including justification for his vices. round the person and poetry of[102] burns numberless well-meaning people have found it worth their while to write a literature. there was a time when “the bard” received praise only from mere poets. keats wrote sonnets about him; montgomery offered him the usual graceful tribute; wordsworth mentioned him cheek by jowl with chatterton; and even eliza cook had her metrical say about him. then the prose men came along—carlyle, stevenson, henley. carlyle took the man burns and set him up for a tremendous genius, with “a head of gold.” stevenson, whom probably for this reason the scotch do not love, ventured to suggest that mr. burns had “feet of clay.” mr. henley followed and accentuated the feet of clay, greatly to the annoyance of all scotland. it ill becomes the present writer to attempt to do what has already been done so well, therefore he will say nothing about either heads of gold or feet of clay. but robert burns is everybody’s property, and one may crave leave even at this late day to say about him the thing that one believes.[103] the whole truth about burns may be summed up in half a dozen words. he was a poet, he was a loose liver, and he was a ploughman. and if one looks through his writings, one is forced to the conclusion that he owes his fame to the circumstances that he was a loose liver and a ploughman rather than to the circumstance that he was a poet. to take up the works of burns in one volume and to glance through them haphazard, assaying here a page and there a page, is to come to a knowledge of him which is rather staggering. as i write, i have before me the globe edition of the complete works of robert burns, edited by alexander smith. it is a portly book, and one is aware that it contains matter which is really of excellent quality, considered as poetry. yet to test it by chance openings is to perceive that in the main burns, as poet, has been vastly overrated. on page 211, for example, which is about the middle of the book, i find five pieces, not one of which is good enough to grace a common valentine. we lead off with peggy’s charms:
[104]
my peggy’s face, my peggy’s form,
the frost of hermit age might warm;
my peggy’s worth, my peggy’s mind,
might charm the first of human kind.
i love my peggy’s angel air,
her face so truly, heavenly fair,
her native grace so void of art;
but i adore my peggy’s heart.
not to put too fine a point upon it, this is arrant drivel, villainously rhymed. then comes up in the morning early:
up in the morning’s no’ for me,
up in the morning early;
when a’ the hills are cover’d wi’ snaw,
i’m sure it’s winter fairly.
cauld blaws the wind frae east to west,
the drift is driving sairly;
sae loud and shrill’s i hear the blast,
i’m sure it’s winter fairly.
the birds sit chittering in the thorn,
a’ day they fare but sparely;
and lang’s the night frae e’en to morn,
i’m sure it’s winter fairly.
one surmises up in the morning early belongs to “that great body of treasurable songs with which burns has dowered his countrymen.” on the face of it, to find sorrier stuff one would have to visit an english[105] music hall. there is not a glimmer of poetry in any one of the twelve lines, and the composition as a whole might have been written by a precocious infant in a glasgow board school. after this precious production we are regaled with the appended touching piece of sentimentalism:
tho’ cruel fate should bid us part,
as far’s the pole and line;
her dear idea round my heart
should tenderly entwine.
tho’ mountains frown and deserts howl,
and oceans roar between;
yet, dearer than my deathless soul,
i still would love my jean.
the spectacle of a gentleman having somebody’s “dear idea” entwined, whether tenderly or otherwise, round his heart would surely set a cat laughing. and the loving of jean, though mountains frown and deserts howl and oceans roar between, is clearly the merest fustian. follows i dreamed i lay where flowers were springing—a stupid sort of dream to say the least of it. the flowers,[106] it seems, were springing “gaily in the sunny beam,” and the poet, it seems, not only “dreamed that he lay among them” but, that he was “list’ning to the wild birds singing by a falling crystal stream,” which is a very common and hackneyed thing for a tenth-rate poet to do. but mark:
straight the sky grew black and daring;
thro’ the woods the whirlwinds rave;
trees with aged arms were warring,
o’er the swelling, drumlie wave.
such was my life’s deceitful morning,
such the pleasures i enjoy’d;
but lang or noon, loud tempests storming
a’ my flowery bliss destroy’d.
tho’ fickle fortune has deceived me,
she promised fair, and performed but ill;
of monie a joy and hope bereav’d me,
i bear a heart shall support me still.
the moral here is as lame as the meter, and in the open market to-day the “poem” is not worth fourpence. we finish the page with bonie ann:
ye gallants bright, i red you right,
beware of bonie ann:
her comely face sae fu’ o’ grace,
your heart she will trepan.
[107]
her een sae bright, like stars by night,
her skin is like the swan;
sae jimpy lac’d her genty waist,
that sweetly ye might span.
youth, grace, and love, attendant move,
and pleasure leads the van;
in a’ their charms, and conquering arms,
they wait on bonie ann.
the captive bands may chain the hands,
but love enslaves the man:
ye gallants braw, i red you a’
beware of bonie ann.
one notes that three out of these five lucubrations have to do with love, and one wonders how a man who went about with such ill-considered love-verses in his pocket ever got a woman to look at him.
to take our life in our hands once more, we open on page 153. here we have a choice selection of short pieces, and feeble, which we reproduce as they stand:
to john m’murdo, esq.
o, could i give thee india’s wealth,
as i this trifle send!
because thy joy in both would be
to share them with a friend.
but golden sands did never grace
the heliconean stream;
then take what gold could never buy—
an honest bard’s esteem.
[108]
on the death of a lap-dog, named echo
in wood and wild, ye warbling throng,
your heavy loss deplore;
now half-extinct your powers of song,
sweet echo is no more.
ye jarring, screeching things around,
scream your discordant joys;
now half your din of tuneless sound
with echo silent lies.
lines written at louden manse
the night was still, and o’er the hill
the moon shone on the castle wa’;
the mavis sang, while dew-drops hang
around her on the castle wa’.
sae merrily they danced the ring,
frae eenin’ till the cock did craw;
and the o’erword o’ the spring,
was irvine’s bairns are bonie a’.
these three effusions, dear reader, are really and truly the work of burns—or, if you prefer it, of burrrrrns. in despair one hunts up something for which the man is noted. scots wha hae one thinks, will serve. it has been described as noble, and marvellous, and inspiring, and heaven knows what besides. here it is:
[109]
scots wha hae wi’ wallace bled,
scots whom bruce has often led;
welcome to your gory bed
or to victorie!
now’s the day, and now’s the hour,
see the front o’ battle lour,
see approach proud edward’s power—
chains and slaverie!
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!
by oppression’s woes and pains,
by your sons in servile chains,
we will drain our dearest veins,
but they shall be free.
lay the proud usurpers low!
tyrants fall in every foe,
liberty’s in every blow,
let us do or dee!
as a matter of fact, scots wha hae is one those poems which most people have heard about and few people have read. for this reason i print it in extenso and commend it to the consideration of the critical. is it really noble, or marvellous, or inspiring?[110] would it pass muster as a new performance? is it a whit the better, or sounder, or more convincing than god save the king, which everybody cheerfully admits is not poetry? i, for one, hae me doots.
like artemus ward and writers of “wot-the-orfis-boy finks” order, burns owes much of his seeming inspiration and humour to an uncouth orthography. put into decent english, many of his most vaunted lays amount to nothing at all. indeed, practically the whole of the poetry which came from his pen could be compressed into a book of fifty pages. i do not say that much of the matter one would have to include in those fifty pages is not matter of an exceptional and extraordinary quality. mr. henley has told us that in the vernacular, burns, at his best, touches the highest level; and with this pronouncement nobody who knows the difference between good writing and bad will quarrel. but i do assert that the best of burns is not sufficient, either in quality or quantity, to justify the absurd fame which[111] has been bestowed upon him by his countrymen. james i., whom the average scotchman barely knows by name, was, taking him all in all, quite as good a poet as burns. so was barbour; so was drummond of hawthornden; and, i had almost added, so were stevenson and robert buchanan. the question naturally arises, how comes it to pass that burns who, excepting by a fluke, was always more or less of a middling poet, has come to rank as the finest thing in letters that scotland ever produced? the answer to that question is simple enough. in spite of the cotter’s saturday night, and two or three other pieces which are the delight and mainstay of the scotch kirk-goer, burns was undoubtedly the poet of licence and alcoholism. also he was a ploughman.
should humble state our mirth provoke!
what folly to misca’ that,
the sapling grows a stately oak,
wi’ spreading shade and a’ that.
for a’ that and a’ that,
his toils and cares and a’ that,
we’ve seen a ploughman crowned at last
the king o’ men for a’ that.
[112]
after illicit love and flaring drunkenness, nothing appeals so much to scotch sentiment as having been born in the gutter. in this matter of admiration for people who attain notoriety from a basis of humble origins i do not know that the scotch stand entirely alone. at the present moment, much fuss is being made in the newspapers over a policeman who has seen fit to devote himself to the painting of pictures, and who has succeeded in getting one of his canvases hung at burlington house; and if i remember rightly there used to be a postman poet of whom sundry highly placed critics wrote sundry kindly encouraging and gratuitous things. also the english press is apt to tell us that the great lord so-and-so was originally a bootblack, and that the great mr. so-and-so went to canada with seven shillings in his pocket. in fact, the prodigy who began on nothing, and ultimately became rich or famous, is a figure which british humanity dearly loves. and burns, as we have seen, was a ploughman. what special excellence may lie in being a[113] ploughman nobody but a scotchman may perceive. in england our booms on humble talent are of short duration. clare and ebenezer elliott both had their little day, and ceased to be. but the scotch ploughman persists, and the fact that he was a ploughman helps him to persist, and is a great source of pride to the scotch. the real reason, however, why burns became, and continues to be, a sort of patron saint to the peoples north of the tweed is, as i have already suggested, that he was an erotic writer and a condoner of popular vices. turn where you will in his precious works, you will find that drunkenness and impropriety are matters for which he has unqualified sympathy. whiskey and women are the subjects which furnish forth the majority of his flights. he writes of both with a freedom which would not nowadays be tolerated, and the moral effect of what he has to say cannot be regarded as otherwise than detrimental. i have before pointed out that one of mr. henley’s critics has asserted that the standard[114] of morality in the rural districts of scotland is much lower to-day than it was in burns’s time. the inference is obvious. burns, every scotchman tells you, and tells you truly, has played no small part in moulding the sentiments and tendencies of the scotch people as we know them. it was he who gave them their first notion of bumptious independence; it was he who taught them that “a man’s a man for a’ that”—which, on the whole, is a monstrous fallacy; it was he who averred that whiskey and freedom gang together; and it was he who gave the countenance of song to shameful and squalid sexuality. in a great number of burns’s love songs the suggestion is of the lowest. one could take a selection of these songs, print them in a little book, have them sold in the streets of london at a penny, and be prosecuted at bow street for one’s trouble. the man’s mind was not clean; he made the muse an instrument for the promulgation of skulduddery (i will not vouch for the orthography, but every scotchman knows what i[115] mean); he degraded and prostituted his intellect, and earned thereby the love and worship of a people who appear to have a sympathetic weakness for erotic verse if it be but scotch.
it is hard to get the truth about burns out of the scotch writers; yet the more honest among them have always had a sneaking suspicion that he was an overrated poet. somehow, in perusing their estimates, one has a feeling that burns is not so much being expounded as defended. stevenson, who tried to be just, has come nearer the mark about him than any writer of our own time; but even stevenson lacked the courage to go the whole hog. of burns, the writer, he could be brought to say nothing more trenchant than that he “had a tendency to borrow a hint,” and that he was “indebted in a very uncommon degree to ramsay and fergusson.” and, he adds, by way of defence, that “when we remember burns’s obligation to his predecessors, we must never forget his immense advances on them.” perhaps not.
[116]
as to burns, the man, it is safe to say that a more profligate person has seldom figured on the slopes of parnassus. in love he was as carnal as he was false. he canted and prated and pretended, but his relations with women will not bear examination. his life as a whole would have discredited a dustman, much less a poet. he whined about his “misfortunes,” and advertised them and made much out of them; but nobody in his senses can sympathise with him. that he should be held up for a model by scottish writers and scottish preachers is a crying scandal. the king-o’-men cackle is the sheerest impertinence. burns never was the king o’ men. he was never even a decent living man. he never had a rag of conduct wherewithal to cover himself. he was simply an incontinent yokel with a gift for metricism. that his memory should stand for so much in scotland constitutes a very grave reflection upon the scottish character and the scottish point of view.