THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ROBERT BURNS 11

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ROBERT BURNS 11

Most of the songs which he composed under the influences to which I

have alluded are of the first order: "Bonnie Lesley," "Highland Mary,"

"Auld Rob Morris," "Duncan Gray," "Wandering Willie," "Meg o' the

Mill," "The poor and honest sodger," "Bonnie Jean," "Phillis the

fair," "John Anderson my Jo," "Had I a cave on some wild distant

shore," "Whistle and I'll come to you, my lad," "Bruce's Address to

his men at Bannockburn," "Auld Lang Syne," "Thine am I, my faithful

fair," "Wilt thou be my dearie," "O Chloris, mark how green the

groves," "Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair," "Their groves of

sweet myrtle," "Last May a braw wooer came down the long glen," "O

Mally's meek, Mally's sweet," "Hey for a lass wi' a tocher," "Here's

a health to ane I loe dear," and the "Fairest maid on Devon banks."

Many of the latter lyrics of Burns were more or less altered, to put

them into better harmony with the airs, and I am not the only one who

has wondered that a bard so impetuous and intractable in most matters,

should have become so soft and pliable, as to make changes which too

often sacrificed the poetry for the sake of a fuller and more swelling

sound. It is true that the emphatic notes of the music must find their

echo in the emphatic words of the verse, and that words soft and

liquid are fitter for ladies' lips, than words hissing and rough; but

it is also true that in changing a harsher word for one more

harmonious the sense often suffers, and that happiness of __EXPRESSION__,

and that dance of words which lyric verse requires, lose much of their

life and vigour. The poet's favourite walk in composing his songs was

on a beautiful green sward on the northern side of the Nith, opposite

Lincluden: and his favourite posture for composition at home was

balancing himself on the hind legs of his arm-chair.

 

While indulging in these lyrical nights, politics penetrated into

Nithsdale, and disturbed the tranquillity of that secluded region.

First, there came a contest far the representation of the Dumfries

district of boroughs, between Patrick Miller, younger, of Dalswinton,

and Sir James Johnstone, of Westerhall, and some two years afterwards,

a struggle for the representation of the county of Kirkcudbright,

between the interest of the Stewarts, of Galloway, and Patrick Heron,

of Kerroughtree. In the first of these the poet mingled discretion

with his mirth, and raised a hearty laugh, in which both parties

joined; for this sobriety of temper, good reasons may be assigned:

Miller, the elder, of Dalswinton, had desired to oblige him in the

affair of Ellisland, and his firm and considerate friend, M'Murdo, of

Drumlanrig, was chamberlain to his Grace of Queensbury, on whoso

interest Miller stood. On the other hand, his old Jacobitical

affections made him the secret well-wisher to Westerhall, for up to

this time, at least till acid disappointment and the democratic

doctrine of the natural equality of man influenced him, Burns, or as a

western rhymer of his day and district worded the reproach--Rob was a

Tory. His situation, it will therefore be observed, disposed him to

moderation, and accounts for the milkiness of his Epistle to Fintray,

in which he marshals the chiefs of the contending factions, and

foretells the fierceness of the strife, without pretending to foresee

the event. Neither is he more explicit, though infinitely more

humorous, in his ballad of "The Five Carlins," in which he

impersonates the five boroughs--Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Lochmaben,

Sanquhar, and Annan, and draws their characters as shrewd and

calculating dames, met in much wrath and drink to choose a

representative.

 

But the two or three years which elapsed between the election for the

boroughs, and that for the county adjoining, wrought a serious change

in the temper as well as the opinions of the poet. His Jacobitism, as

has been said was of a poetic kind, and put on but in obedience to old

feelings, and made no part of the man: he was in his heart as

democratic as the kirk of Scotland, which educated him--he

acknowledged no other superiority but the mental: "he was disposed,

too," said Professor Walker, "from constitutional temper, from

education and the accidents of life, to a jealousy of power, and a

keen hostility against every system which enabled birth and opulence

to anticipate those rewards which he conceived to belong to genius and

virtue." When we add to this, a resentment of the injurious treatment

of the dispensers of public patronage, who had neglected his claims,

and showered pensions and places on men unworthy of being named with

him, we have assigned causes for the change of side and the tone of

asperity and bitterness infused into "The Heron Ballads." Formerly

honey was mixed with his gall: a little praise sweetened his censure:

in these election lampoons he is fierce and even venomous:--no man has

a head but what is empty, nor a heart that is not black: men descended

without reproach from lines of heroes are stigmatized as cowards, and

the honest and conscientious are reproached as miserly, mean, and

dishonourable. Such is the spirit of party. "I have privately," thus

writes the poet to Heron, "printed a good many copies of the ballads,

and have sent them among friends about the country. You have already,

as your auxiliary, the sober detestation of mankind on the heads of

your opponents; find I swear by the lyre of Thalia, to muster on your

side all the votaries of honest laughter and fair, candid ridicule."

The ridicule was uncandid, and the laughter dishonest. The poet was

unfortunate in his political attachments: Miller gained the boroughs

which Burns wished he might lose, and Heron lost the county which he

foretold he would gain. It must also be recorded against the good

taste of the poet, that he loved to recite "The Heron Ballads," and

reckon them among his happiest compositions.

 

From attacking others, the poet was--in the interval between penning

these election lampoons--called on to defend himself: for this he

seems to have been quite unprepared, though in those yeasty times he

might have expected it. "I have been surprised, confounded, and

distracted," he thus writes to Graham, of Fintray, "by Mr. Mitchell,

the collector, telling me that he has received an order from your

board to inquire into my political conduct, and blaming me as a person

disaffected to government. Sir, you are a husband and a father: you

know what you would feel, to see the much-loved wife of your bosom,

and your helpless prattling little ones, turned adrift into the world,

degraded and disgraced, from a situation in which they had been

respectable and respected. I would not tell a deliberate falsehood,

no, not though even worse horrors, if worse can be than those I have

mentioned, hung over my head, and I say that the allegation, whatever

villain has made it, is a lie! To the British constitution, on

Revolution principles, next after my God, I am devotedly attached. To

your patronage as a man of some genius, you have allowed me a claim;

and your esteem as an honest man I know is my due. To these, sir,

permit me to appeal: by these I adjure you to save me from that misery

which threatens to overwhelm me, and which with my latest breath I

will say I have not deserved." In this letter, another, intended for

the eye of the Commissioners of the Board of Excise, was enclosed, in

which he disclaimed entertaining the idea of a British republic--a

wild dream of the day--but stood by the principles of the constitution

of 1688, with the wish to see such corruptions as had crept in,

amended. This last remark, it appears, by a letter from the poet to

Captain Erskine, afterwards Earl of Mar, gave great offence, for

Corbet, one of the superiors, was desired to inform him, "that his

business was to act, and not to think; and that whatever might be men

or measures, it was his duty to be silent and obedient." The

intercession of Fintray, and the explanations of Burns, were so far

effectual, that his political offense was forgiven, "only I

understand," said he, "that all hopes of my getting officially forward

are blasted." The records of the Excise Office exhibit no trace of

this memorable matter, and two noblemen, who were then in the

government, have assured me that this harsh proceeding received no

countenance at head-quarters, and must have originated with some

ungenerous or malicious person, on whom the poet had spilt a little of

the nitric acid of his wrath.

 

That Burns was numbered among the republicans of Dumfries I well

remember: but then those who held different sentiments from the men in

power, were all, in that loyal town, stigmatized as democrats: that he

either desired to see the constitution changed, or his country invaded

by the liberal French, who proposed to set us free with the bayonet,

and then admit us to the "fraternal embrace," no one ever believed. It

is true that he spoke of premiers and peers with contempt; that he

hesitated to take off his hat in the theatre, to the air of "God save

the king;" that he refused to drink the health of Pitt, saying he

preferred that of Washington--a far greater man; that he wrote bitter

words against that combination of princes, who desired to put down

freedom in France; that he said the titled spurred and the wealthy

switched England and Scotland like two hack-horses; and that all the

high places of the land, instead of being filled by genius and talent,

were occupied, as were the high-places of Israel, with idols of wood

or of stone. But all this and more had been done and said before by

thousands in this land, whose love of their country was never

questioned. That it was bad taste to refuse to remove his hat when

other heads were bared, and little better to refuse to pledge in

company the name of Pitt, because he preferred Washington, cannot

admit of a doubt; but that he deserved to be written down traitor, for

mere matters of whim or caprice, or to be turned out of the unenvied

situation of "gauging auld wives' barrels," because he thought there

were some stains on the white robe of the constitution, seems a sort

of tyranny new in the history of oppression. His love of country is

recorded in too many undying lines to admit of a doubt now: nor is it

that chivalrous love alone which men call romantic; it is a love which

may be laid up in every man's heart and practised in every man's life;

the words are homely, but the words of Burns are always expressive:--

 

"The kettle of the kirk and state

Perhaps a clout may fail in't,

But deil a foreign tinkler loon

Shall ever ca' a nail in't.

Be Britons still to Britons true,

Amang ourselves united;

For never but by British hands

Shall British wrongs be righted."

 

But while verses, deserving as these do to become the national motto,

and sentiments loyal and generous, were overlooked and forgotten, all

his rash words about freedom, and his sarcastic sallies about thrones

and kings, were treasured up to his injury, by the mean and the

malicious. His steps were watched and his words weighed; when he

talked with a friend in the street, he was supposed to utter sedition;

and when ladies retired from the table, and the wine circulated with

closed doors, he was suspected of treason rather than of toasting,

which he often did with much humour, the charms of woman; even when he

gave as a sentiment, "May our success be equal to the justice of our

cause," he was liable to be challenged by some gunpowder captain, who

thought that we deserved success in war, whether right or wrong. It is

true that he hated with a most cordial hatred all who presumed on

their own consequence, whether arising from wealth, titles, or

commissions in the army; officers he usually called "the epauletted

puppies," and lords he generally spoke of as "feather-headed fools,"

who could but strut and stare and be no answer in kind to retort his

satiric flings, his unfriends reported that it was unsafe for young

men to associate with one whose principles were democratic, and

scarcely either modest or safe for young women to listen to a poet

whose notions of female virtue were so loose and his songs so free.

These sentiments prevailed so far that a gentleman on a visit from

London, told me he was dissuaded from inviting Burns to a dinner,

given by way of welcome back to his native place, because he was the

associate of democrats and loose people; and when a modest dame of

Dumfries expressed, through a friend, a wish to have but the honour of

speaking to one of whose genius she was an admirer, the poet declined

the interview, with a half-serious smile, saying, "Alas! she is

handsome, and you know the character publicly assigned to me." She

escaped the danger of being numbered, it is likely, with the Annas and

the Chlorises of his freer strains.

 

The neglect of his country, the tyranny of the Excise, and the

downfall of his hopes and fortunes, were now to bring forth their

fruits--the poet's health began to decline. His drooping looks, his

neglect of his person, his solitary saunterings, his escape from the

stings of reflection into socialities, and his distempered joy in the

company of beauty, all spoke, as plainly as with a tongue, of a

sinking heart and a declining body. Yet though he was sensible of

sinking health, hope did not at once desert him: he continued to pour

out such tender strains, and to show such flashes of wit and humour at

the call of Thomson, as are recorded of no other lyrist: neither did

he, when in company after his own mind, hang the head, and speak

mournfully, but talked and smiled and still charmed all listeners by

his witty vivacities.

 

On the 20th of June, 1795, he writes thus of his fortunes and

condition to his friend Clarke, "Still, still the victim of

affliction; were you to see the emaciated figure who now holds the pen

to you, you would not know your old friend. Whether I shall ever get

about again is only known to HIM, the Great Unknown, whoso creature I

am. Alas, Clarke, I begin to fear the worst! As to my individual self

I am tranquil, and would despise myself if I were not: but Burns's

poor widow and half-a-dozen of his dear little ones, helpless orphans!

_Here_ I am as weak as a woman's tear. Enough of this! 'tis half my

disease. I duly received your last, enclosing the note: it came

extremely in time, and I am much obliged to your punctuality. Again I

must request you to do me the same kindness. Be so very good as by

return of post to enclose me _another_ note: I trust you can do so

without inconvenience, and it will seriously oblige me. If I must go,

I leave a few friends behind me, whom I shall regret while

consciousness remains. I know I shall live in their remembrance. O,

dear, dear Clarke! that I shall ever see you again is I am afraid

highly improbable." This remarkable letter proves both the declining

health, and the poverty of the poet: his digestion was so bad that he

could taste neither flesh nor fish: porridge and milk he could alone

swallow, and that but in small quantities. When it is recollected that

he had no more than thirty shillings a week to keep house, and live

like a gentleman, no one need wonder that his wife had to be obliged

to a generous neighbour for some of the chief necessaries for her

coming confinement, and that the poet had to beg, in extreme need, two

guinea notes from a distant friend.

 

His sinking state was not unobserved by his friends, and Syme and

M'Murdo united with Dr. Maxwell in persuading him, at the beginning of

the summer, to seek health at the Brow-well, a few miles east of

Dumfries, where there were pleasant walks on the Solway-side, and

salubrious breezes from the sea, which it was expected would bring the

health to the poet they had brought to many. For a while, his looks

brightened up, and health seemed inclined to return: his friend, the

witty and accomplished Mrs. Riddel, who was herself ailing, paid him a

visit. "I was struck," she said, "with his appearance on entering the

room: the stamp of death was impressed on his features. His first

words were, 'Well, Madam, have you any commands for the other world?'

I replied that it seemed a doubtful case which of us should be there

soonest; he looked in my face with an air of great kindness, and

expressed his concern at seeing me so ill, with his usual sensibility.

At table he ate little or nothing: we had a long conversation about

his present state, and the approaching termination of all his earthly

prospects. He showed great concern about his literary fame, and

particularly the publication of his posthumous works; he said he was

well aware that his death would occasion some noise, and that every

scrap of his writing would be revived against him, to the injury of

his future reputation; that letters and verses, written with unguarded

freedom, would be handed about by vanity or malevolence when no dread

of his resentment would restrain them, or prevent malice or envy from

pouring forth their venom on his name. I had seldom seen his mind

greater, or more collected. There was frequently a considerable degree

of vivacity in his sallies; but the concern and dejection I could not

disguise, damped the spirit of pleasantry he seemed willing to

indulge." This was on the evening of the 5th of July; another lady who

called to see him, found him seated at a window, gazing on the sun,

then setting brightly on the summits of the green hills of Nithsdale.

"Look how lovely the sun is," said the poet, "but he will soon have

done with shining for me."

 

He now longed for home: his wife, whom he ever tenderly loved, was

about to be confined in child-bed: his papers were in sad confusion,

and required arrangement; and he felt that desire to die, at least,

among familiar things and friendly faces, so common to our nature. He

had not long before, though much reduced in pocket, refused with scorn

an offer of fifty pounds, which a speculating bookseller made, for

leave to publish his looser compositions; he had refused an offer of

the like sum yearly, from Perry of the Morning Chronicle, for poetic

contributions to his paper, lest it might embroil him with the ruling

powers, and he had resented the remittance of five pounds from

Thomson, on account of his lyric contributions, and desired him to do

so no more, unless he wished to quarrel with him; but his necessities

now, and they had at no time been so great, induced him to solicit

five pounds from Thomson, and ten pounds from his cousin, James

Burness, of Montrose, and to beg his friend Alexander Cunningham to

intercede with the Commissioners of Excise, to depart from their usual

practice, and grant him his full salary; "for without that," he added,

"if I die not of disease, I must perish with hunger." Thomson sent the

five pounds, James Burness sent the ten, but the Commissioners of

Excise refused to be either merciful or generous. Stobie, a young

expectant in the customs, was both;--he performed the duties of the

dying poet, and refused to touch the salary. The mind of Burns was

haunted with the fears of want and the terrors of a jail; nor were

those fears without foundation; one Williamson, to whom he was

indebted for the cloth to make his volunteer regimentals, threatened

the one; and a feeling that he was without money for either his own

illness or the confinement of his wife, threatened the other.

 

Burns returned from the Brow-well, on the 18th of July: as he walked

from the little carriage which brought him up the Mill hole-brae to

his own door, he trembled much, and stooped with weakness and pain,

and kept his feet with difficulty: his looks were woe-worn and

ghastly, and no one who saw him, and there were several, expected to

see him again in life. It was soon circulated through Dumfries, that

Burns had returned worse from the Brow-well; that Maxwell thought ill

of him, and that, in truth, he was dying. The anxiety of all classes

was great; differences of opinion were forgotten, in sympathy for his

early fate: wherever two or three were met together their talk was of

Burns, of his rare wit, matchless humour, the vivacity of his

conversation, and the kindness of his heart. To the poet himself,

death, which he now knew was at hand, brought with it no fear; his

good-humour, which small matters alone ruffled, did not forsake him,

and his wit was ever ready. He was poor--he gave his pistols, which he

had used against the smugglers on the Solway, to his physician, adding

with a smile, that he had tried them and found them an honour to their

maker, which was more than he could say of the bulk of mankind! He was

proud--he remembered the indifferent practice of the corps to which he

belonged, and turning to Gibson, one of his fellow-soldiers, who stood

at his bedside with wet eyes, "John," said he, and a gleam of humour

passed over his face, "pray don't let the awkward-squad fire over me."

It was almost the last act of his life to copy into his Common-place

Book, the letters which contained the charge against him of the

Commissioners of Excise, and his own eloquent refutation, leaving

judgment to be pronounced by the candour of posterity.

 

It has been injuriously said of Burns, by Coleridge, that the man

sunk, but the poet was bright to the last: he did not sink in the

sense that these words imply: the man was manly to the latest draught

of breath. That he was a poet to the last, can be proved by facts, as

well as by the word of the author of Christabel. As he lay silently

growing weaker and weaker, he observed Jessie Lewars, a modest and

beautiful young creature, and sister to one of his brethren of the

Excise, watching over him with moist eyes, and tending him with the

care of a daughter; he rewarded her with one of those songs which are

an insurance against forgetfulness. The lyrics of the north have

nothing finer than this exquisite stanza:--

 

"Altho' thou maun never be mine,

Altho' even hope is denied,

'Tis sweeter for thee despairing,

Than aught in the world beside."

 

His thoughts as he lay wandered to Charlotte Hamilton, and he

dedicated some beautiful stanzas to her beauty and her coldness,

beginning, "Fairest maid on Devon banks."

 

It was a sad sight to see the poet gradually sinking; his wife in

hourly expectation of her sixth confinement, and his four helpless

children--a daughter, a sweet child, had died the year before--with no

one of their lineage to soothe them with kind words or minister to

their wants. Jessie Lewars, with equal prudence and attention, watched

over them all: she could not help seeing that the thoughts of the

desolation which his death would bring, pressed sorely on him, for he

loved his children, and hoped much from his boys. He wrote to his

father-in-law, James Armour, at Mauchline, that he was dying, his wife

nigh her confinement, and begged that his mother-in-law would hasten

to them and speak comfort. He wrote to Mrs. Dunlop, saying, "I have

written to you so often without receiving any answer that I would not

trouble you again, but for the circumstances in which I am. An illness

which has long hung about me in all probability will speedily send me

beyond that bourne whence no traveller returns. Your friendship, with

which for many years you honoured me, was a friendship dearest to my

soul: your conversation and your correspondence were at once highly

entertaining and instructive--with what pleasure did I use to break up

the seal! The remembrance yet adds one pulse more to my poor

palpitating heart. Farewell!" A tremor pervaded his frame; his tongue

grew parched, and he was at times delirious: on the fourth day after

his return, when his attendant, James Maclure, held his medicine to

his lips, he swallowed it eagerly, rose almost wholly up, spread out

his hands, sprang forward nigh the whole length of the bed, fell on

his face, and expired. He died on the 21st of July, when nearly thirty-seven years and seven months old.