The Dominion. SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 1018. ROBERT BURNS & HIS MESSAGE FOR OUR TIME

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 103, 25 January 1919, Page 6

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 1018. ROBERT BURNS & HIS MESSAGE FOR OUR TIME

This day onff hundred and sixty 'years,.ago an event took place in a Scottish cottar's homo that is annually commemorated all over tho world whore the English tongue is spoken. That event was the birth of Robert Burns. -Queen, the historian, says that for England the year 1759 was one of triumphs in every part of the world, and she had never before played so great a part in the history of mankind. The British at Miriden triumphed gloriously when a single line of infantry broke through three lines of cavalry and tumbled the enemy into ruin. On the heights of Quebec Wolfe led his soldiers to victory, and brought the American Continent under the British flag. In that year also the British Navy conv passed tho seemingly impossible. The enemy had laid his plans for the invasion of England, but at Quiberon Bay his. fleet was smashed up by the British ships "in the dark, among rocks, in a severe gale, and on'a ,lee shore." These astonishing; successes of 1759 . followed Olive's victory at Plassey, in Bengal, where British domination in India began and the foundation of our .'Eastern Empire . was* laid. These triumphs in arms . changed the map of the world, but sonic of the changes were not permanent, and tho heroes of-these triumphs do not live in the memory of the world. There is no red-letter day in 1759 in British history save one, and that is the. natal day of Hobert Burns. This man find his works are commemorated by millions to-day, and the kings, soldiers, and statesmen of his age and their works are treated by the mass of men as though they were buried in oblivion. There is a measure of injustice in this' discrimination, which a, wider knowledgeof history will lesson, but. Burns will live for' ages in his writings, which stir the soul and move the heart of masses of men. Tennyson said: "There never was an immortal poet if Burns be not one." The world remembers - the things. it values, it prizes. -This commemoration dayenforces the statement of a profound student of history: "The world's wealth is in its original men; by these and their works it is .a world and not a waste: the memory and,the record of what it bore—this is the sum of its strength and its sacred property for ever." There are few subjects so well worn as studies on the life and writings of Burns." In the British Museum • there arc eight hundred books or parts of books devoted to this theme. There, is a wearisome sameness in a good many of- tho studies of Burns, and some great publishers have objected to writers going out of the beaten ' track. Kobert Louis Stevenson, was asked by the publishers of a'former edi-. tion of. the -Encyclopaedia Britannica -to- write the article, on Burns. He did so, going out of the beaten track, and the publishers paid him for the article, but suppressed it 'and got another man to write on 'the subject. They were probably justified in doing so, for Stevenson's Onn'rhill article, republishedin his Familiar Studies of Men and Books, does justice neither to Stevenson nor to Burns. Critics 'from 1828, when Carlyle wrote his famous. Edinburgh lleview article on Burns, down to our time, have not failed . to lay stress on the true genius of the poet, and have pointed out , that his'ancestors and his surroundings in no way explain his greatness. His genius was recognised by Scotland in 1786, when the Kilmarnock edition of his poems, was published. , The literati of Edinburgh were captured, and the "ploughboys and maidservants" used their scant cash, which was laid aside to buy clothes to purchase the,poems of Burns. He was then only twenty-seven ■ years of age, and a future rich in poetic production seemed to stand before him. He wrote with the surcncss and swiftness of a man inspired. An immortal song would be produced in a morning, and a. great poem like Tarn o' S ha titer dashed ■off in a' day. But Burns never used his great powers, as was expected. What he calls his "thoughtless follies" destroyed his health, pained and stained his spirit, and sent him to his grave at the early age of thirty-seven. But those' sad tragic ten years were not without rich fruits of his genius. No lengthy sustained poem came from his pen, but he, brought forth .a harvest of short poems—his songs— which have girdled the world. Of these songs it has been truly said, "They'liftvc passed into, the air we breathe: they arc so real that they seem things.rather than words, or, nearer still, living beings. They have taken all hearts becausc they are the breath of his own; not polished cadences, but utterances as direct as laughter or tears'." Whittier felt the beating pulse .in the poetry of ■ Burns, and sang its praise: Through all its tuneful art, how strong The human feeling Hushes! The very moonlight of his eong Is warm with smiles and blushes! In spite of the endless books that have been written to expound Burns, there are principles which the poet hold and. taught and for which, he suffered that have rarely been sympathetically and intelligently dealt with.. Burns was r, moralist, and a desire for social and'political reform burned in him as a passion. Burns lived .in an age of revolution, and the spirit of revolution possessed him. He was seventeen when America, led; by ! Washington, declared for independence. He was thirty when the Bastille fell.' George Washington and the French revolutionaries were ly's heroes, and their principles were his principles'. In his passion for civil and political liberty .Burns belonged -t.o tho twentieth and not to the eighteenth century.. He was a democrat, and lie scorned the incapable'who held the reins of power.. In his A Man's .a, Man for a' Thai he spoke as the democrat, and uttered a word for sll time when he wrote: Tho rank is but tho guinea's stamp, The man's tlio gowd for a' that. His passion, for political freedom led him to attempt to put George Washington before .William Pitt in a toast at a social gathering, and his sympathy with the French revolutionaries was so strong that he actually sent them . four small cannon with a letter of appreciation. He was' then in the 15xcisc, and his unwise action nearly lost him his position. ■ The passion of

the poet for liberty comcs out in his address- of Robert Bruce to his troops nt Banriockburn, entitled j S'cois ]Vhn- Hue. No more powerful call to fight for liberty was ever written with human pen. The spirit of nationality was strong in Burns, his writings inspire to the truest patriotism, .and lie made his fellows proud of.the land to which they belonged. These principles of Burns, side-tracked in many a scholarly study of Burns, are full of meaning to us in this time of war against despotism. It was for such principles that the Allies poured out blood and treasure. The horizon, however, of the poet did not end with the nation, but went out to a League of Nations. His Auld Lniir/ oync has found universal and immortal popularity., and in that song he gather's men together in a brotherhood as wide as the world. .Scotland's peasant bard had of a prophet. He had a message for his time, a message for our time, and a message for all time.