LECTURE ON BURNS.

Auckland Times, Volume 3, Issue 139, 6 September 1845, Page 4

LECTURE ON BURNS.

(Concluded from our last.) To quote all the beauties of Burns on the tender passion, would be almost to lead him through, and for this we have scarcely time. His prose correspondence is almost as fertile of beautiful sentiment as his poetry, but it is somewhat disfigured by a laboured style; he never seems so perfectly free as when he Kads himself with the fetters of verse ; his Pegasus goes best in harness. We must not however, part with the subject of his ama* tive poetry, without quoting one or two instances of the inimitable snill with which lie was accustomed to unite humour with sentiment ; this is a combination perfectly unattainable by ordinary skill, and yet it is achieved by him with a kind of spontaneous felicity which Shakspeare himself may hardly compete with; it is like the bubbling up of mirth, and coquetry, and tenderness, which will unconsciously over flow the lips of laughing maidenhood. [“Tam Glen, 5 ’ “ Duncan Grey,” and several others, were here quoted ] Burns never in his amative poetry administered to sensuality. Hear his advice fo a young friend. “ The sacred iowe of weel placed love luxuriantly indulge it • But never tempt the illicit rove tho* nothing slid* divulge it.. 1 waive the quantum of the sin, the hazard of concealing ; But oh ! it hardens all within, and putrefies the feeling,”

W ho can read his John Anderson, and not respect the man who wrote it? The holy principle of conjugal affection and fidelity is expressed there in a single stanza with a fotce that a thousand homilies might fail to effect.

1« 1786, which was his twenty-eighth year, Burns went to Edinburgh to tty his fortune as a poet, having previously published a small volume at Kilmarnock, which had, as it well might, attracted much attention ; he had a letter of introduction to Dr, Blackiock; and was recommended to the notice of the literary coteiies of Edinbro"’ in the pages of a weekly paper, called the Lounger , then edited by the celebrated novelist Mackenzie, who says of him, that “ the attentions lie received during his stay in town, from all ranks aud descriptions of people, were sucli as would have turned any head but his own, &c.” For more than two years he was the idol of the rank and fashion of the Scottish metropolis ; no station was too elevated to do homage to his genius; no society so exclusive, but that he was a solicited guest. Alas! alas! here were the seeds sown which sprung up and choked the harvests of the Ayrshire ploughman ; as soon as the wonderful fascination of his personal presence was withdrawn, the man of genius was remembered only as a toy, thrown by and neglected. Ihe uttermost result of the display of all his great attainments was, that some time afterwards, to prevent his absolute destitution, some of bis great friends sent to the first poet of bis age, the appointment of a district guager. This painful digression from the enjoyment of his poetry is necessary to the next part of my subject. I pass it over as lightly as 1 may, conscious of its repulsive character. Be published several editions of his former and new works here, but I believe, however, that he never was possessed of a thousand pounds at any time.

We have already had some insight of the early friendships of Burns, and a pleasant view it has been to us, for we have seen that the cement of his juvenile associations was a mutual emulation in mental improvement. Charity it is said, begins at home ; and at least it is true in this sense, that home is the best and surest nursery of ail the social affections; accordingly we find in our poet not only a warm, but an undisturbed, a lasting fraternal friendship. Notwithstanding the severity with which the griping hand of poverty had been previously laid upon his shoulder, notwithstanding the uncertainty of his future prospects, we find him on his return from his short, but brilliant career in Edinburgh, throwing open his purse to his fathers’ family with the most profuse liberality ; he was unconscious of any generosity in the matter; he seemed to believe that he was dividing only the proceeds of some joint stock emerprize. His correspondence with Cunningham, with Mrs, Dunlop, Mr, Thompson, with Willie, (who “ brewed a pick o’ maut”) and many others, prove that Burns, once a friend, was fixed for once and aye. The fascination of his conversation, and his addiction to social pleasures, made Burns subject, on his return to the plough, to many bitter disappointments, for thev drew after him into his retirement constant splendid visitors, and laid him open to professions of regard, and promises of assistance, which were as evanescent as the excitement which drew them forth, and though for the time he was sought and flattered by the noble and the wealthy, by the learned and the witty, he was destined to receive no reward —no solid appreciation of his genius, till he had been long cold in his grave, till a costly monument was raised to his memory many years after his death, which may be regarded rather as a trophy to the vanity of his admirers, than to the fame of the man ; almost literally the bread that was necessary for his family (it is true he was too proud to ask for anything) but almost literally, bread was withheld from him, whom his survivors with a doubtful gratitude, have rewarded with a stone. These are unpleasant recollections ; the volumes of our bard, when disagreables arise, will always furnish an antidote; if we cannot do better, we at least shall always do well, in such cases to have recourse to them. We have been speaking of his friendships, and tho’morbidiy sensi live in his feelings of independence, it may be truly said of him, that he never lost the confidence of any one , and never had an open enemy; the evidence of this fact is conspicuous in his works and history ; and the search for it will bring to mind specimens of surpassing eloquence and poetical beauty, 1 know of no writer to whom we may look for language to which human nature responds with such incon trouliable feeling as it does to some of Burns’s writings on this subject.

Lament for Glencairn : the last stanza of this exquisite production provokes the criticism 1 am about to offer, which i hope ]. may do without any spice of pedantry. Justice, indeed, extorts the remark, that the figure of rhetoric called climax, has never been more nobly achieved than here. “ The bridegroom may forget his bride,’ 5 ’Tis true, marriage is sometimes attended with indifference. “The monarch may forget Ids diadem, even on the very day he obtained it,” History proves, in every page, that this gratified vanity is but a fleeting pleasure ; but that a mother should forget her sucking child, i 3 a solecism in nature; it is a superlative degree of degeneracy which he believes to be impossible, and yet even this shall happen, before be ceases to remember the benefits of his friend. It cannot escape notice, with what exquisite, intuitive, but un laboured skill this passage is carried up step by step, to the last noble simile, bespeaking the sympathy of every bosom ; and yet there is little originality in the images ; he owed them all to his familiarity with the sacred writings. It is an honour to his nature that he drank his inspiration from so pure a source. Another iusiance of skill, knowledge, and great beauty, is to be noticed in his advice to a young friend. Burns speaks warmly of his friend, Matthew Henderson, there is much humour as well in this poem. 1 think he had Goldsmith in his recollection when this was written.

It was objected to the tavern bill that was found in the pocket of Sir John Falstaff, that there was but one half-penny worth of bread to a whole week’s consumption of sack. You will think my notice of Burns is one of unqualified panegyric, and that I am incapable of a correct judgment in respect of his defects ; this is not entirely so : for 1 feel bound to enter my protest unequivocally against the latter part of the fifth stanza of this otherwise perfect production ; “ Advice to a young friend ;” because I consider it a blot in the writings, a flaw in the character of our poet; and his the more to be regretted, because it is so conspicuous among the beauties by which it is surrounded. The greatest ornament of youth is ingenuousness ; the greatest happiness of that golden period of life is, that we suspect no falsehood, and we practise no disguise; we are strangers to the darkness of hypocrisy, we revel in the day-light of truth. How Burns could have admitted a passage so contradictory of the noble sentiments he elsewhere promulgates, it is difficult to imagine. It admits of no excuse, unless with an almost blameable charity, we suppose that he was so anxious for the welfare of his young friend, that his zeal misled him into a wish to cloak him in a worldly, an unworthy, but sometimes successful protection, which in his own person he would have scorned to be indebted to. His dedication to Gavin Hamilton is another of those splendid pieces of poetry which our author was wont to pour forth in token of friendship or gratitude ; the selections I am making for quotation, are in their own great merits so well known, that I am fearful of fatiguing you ; I shall read only part of them. Our author lived during that crisis in the history of Modern Empire when the spread of general know ledge first led the bulk of mankind to aspire after liberty ; the progress of opinion which preceded and accompanied the French revolution had created a fever of excitement, and his was not a mind of a temperament likely to smoulder while all around him was lighted into a flame. We are delighted with many eloquent and beautiful outpourings of his heart on this subject, but even at those times he had a true sense of real patriotism, like Cowper, with whom we formerly compared him, he knew well the just balance between loyally and slavery, between liberty and anarchy ; of this few examples are more impressive than a little song which it is said, he composed without premeditation at a meeting of the Dumfries volunteers.

His beautiful imaginative poem entitled “ The Vision ;” his immortal ode in the shape of Bruces’ address to his army at Bannockburn, and a thousand other instances, attest the devotion of his soul to the sacred feelings of patriotism, liberty and personal independence; in respect of the last, his spirit was fully shown when called to account by his superiors in official authority in the Excise, for some bold expression of political feeling. Burns would not retract nor compromise his sentiments, when required to do so, though his bread, and that of his family, was endangered by his firmness, and his hopes of promotion were utterly annihilated by it. His defence of himself on this subject in his address to the gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt, is powerful, manly, and eloquent. It is however, in my opinion, to be regretted as far as we are concerned, which is only for the fame of the poet now; that this matter was not handled by his muse ; for it must be admitted there is an effort in it, which if Cilia had been present to his mind, would have been much better supplied by the good humoured wit and sarcasm, he was so well able to call at his command.

The creative faculty, fancy, is an essential in the constitution of a true poet, and since that immortal magician who created Prospero and Ariel, Puck and Oberon, there has certainly been no higher demonstration of this power in our language, than we shall find in “ Tam o’ Shanter,” the first canto of the vision, the “ Brigs of Ayr,” and in the lively dialogue of the “Twa Dogsin all of which the poet from the most trifling beginnings is carried away by the fine frenzy of his imagination into hallucinations of the most extraordinary power, which supernatural though they be, never violate a natural verisimilitude, but on the contrary, charm us most by reason of the heartfelt truth of their pictures;

Burns had been introduced to the celebrated Captain Grose, the antiquarian, who wrote to him requesting he would send him any tradition which he knew or could arrive at relative to the ruins of Kirk AHoway, popularly supposed to he haunted. Thus prompted, Burns stumbled upon an insigni. ficant legend, which was sufficient to set hi, imagination to work, and the result was the splendid tale of “ Tam O'Sljanter of which it is not too much to say —that there is no poem in our language more redolent of invention, humour, pathos, and, in some degree, of sublimity. This poem has been so much the subject of critical discussion and panegyric, that it would be a loss of time to dwell longer on what is so well known. Burns himself considered it his masterpiece. Pathos was another of the prominent attributes of our author’s tnaae • a deep feeling—that was never laboured, but seemed to gush irrepressibly from the heart, and which never fails to arrest the sympathy of the reader. 1 cannot forbear quoting, as an example of this, u the Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots, on the approach of spring,” After a beautiful apostrophe to the season, sh» laments her cruel imprisonment, and looksvforward to that release which she felt that death alone’ was to confer upon her. Lastly, we may observe that although the high, est perfection of classical elegance and purity of taste united with the polish of scholarship, was hardly to be expected in our poet; yet I think we might challenge Pope or Sbenstone to delight us more by the display of those qualities than Burns does in his •* Address to the shade of Thompson.” We have often heard onr hero remarked as an example of how a habit of courtesy, united to a good understanding, is aide, in the ordinary intercourse of society, to reconcile the highest ranks to the pretensions of intellect, however depressed by externa! circumstances. In Edinburgh Burns, just unyoked from the plough, led the conversation, and commanded the attention of the noble and the learned ; this was done without pretension and without display or self-applause; it was the natural consequence of his great mental powers being drawn out by the wonder and admiration of his entertainers.

We have thus taken, remember, only a cursory review of the works of the Ayrshire bard —the poet of Scotia ; his works are open to all, and If am sure they are calculated to exalt the taste o his readers, and better still, at the same time, to improve their judgment and to elevate their moral*. There is no reason, in these days, why the humblest of mechanics should not be the profoundest of thinkers, —and make it known that be is so. He has no reproach of pregumption to fear now ; there is no impediment now in the way of the poorest of mankind, if he seeks to delight himself in those paths of intellectual enjojment which were formerly open only to the rich, if any apology is still necessary for the introduction of the present subject as a lecture in olir Mechanics’ Institute, 1 will say there is no author in our language more suitable to the popular desire to excel, or more likely to direct that desire aright, than Burns. Every teacher, at least eveiy practical teacher, knows that the best slimuhis ls emulation; where coercion and reproach—where all the powers of discipline, fail, the example of successful rivalry will often rouse the dormant powers of the human mind, —and who is there amoDg us that does net possess the laudable desire to see his children advance in the scale of society. It has been wisely observed that the lower classes of society are the basis of our national character, and itt proportion as they are elevated so will be the attainment ofotir moral position iu the scale of nations. We need not fear that society wail be injured by making every mau a gentleman, for the character ot a gentleman is compatible with every situation of life, aud no less true than the aphorism of Pope—“An honest man is the noblest work of God,” is the saying of Burns — ‘‘That rank is but the Gnitrea’s stamp, The man’s the gowd for a’ that.” We have all to remember that every one among us has the power to rise or fall in proportion to hii individual merit and exertions.

If you are not too fatigued to listen, it may not be inappropriate to conclude with the BAKDS EPITAPH.