BURNS ANNIVERSARY.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2488, 6 February 1871, Page 2

BURNS ANNIVERSARY.

The anniversary supper in memory of Robert Burns, that had been postponed on account of the death of the Rev, Dr Burns, was held last night in the Old Masonic Hal), under the auspices of the Caledonian Society. Mr Thomas Birch, President of the Caledonian Society, was in the chair, and Messrs Kirkcaldy and Mansfield were croupiers. After the customary loyal and local toasts had been drank, Mr T. Callendar, being called upon by the chairman to propose the toast of the evening, said : Another year has rolled over our heads, another milestone of the world’s journey has been reached, and once more we meet to pay homage to the immortal national bard, Robert Burns. In proposing the toast your chairman has confided to my hands, permit mo to refer very shortly to his life, and to one or two characteristics of his career and works. His short but eventful life has always appeared to me to be like that of a stream, taking its rise on the bleak mountain top, amid the storms, snows, and bewildering mists—gliding gently through some fairy nook—now rumbling among rocks—foaming over precipices—murmering past beds of flowers—wooing the fair stream—protected, sheltered by shrubs and trees—all repeated in its short course, till it quietly glides into the great river to disappear among the waters of other thousand streams. Seen, too, iu storm and sunshine, how different: wild and turbulent it threatens destruction to all within its reach, and anon traceable up the mountain's brow as a thin silvery cord, apparently easily broken, but adding features that add immensely to the beauty of the scenery. Who that lias read Burns’s life does not know that even in his earliest infancy his life’s landscape presented no bright fair spectacle. On that night on widen he was born the gable of his father’s house was blown down, and the new-horn poet had to he removed hastily to a more secure ami comfortable abode. Thus cold and comfortless was his entrance into the world. When only six years old he must have known his father had to leave bis farm ruined.' But hi?

life glided on os far as we know easily and gently. On Lochlea bis education began, and the poet in after days recalls scenes rivetted in his mind, and pictures to us a happy family circle at once delightful and refreshing;— “With joy unfeigned brothers and sisters meet, An’ each for other’s welfare kindly spiers, The social hours swift-wing’d, unnotic’d, fleet, Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears. The parents, parted, eye their hopeful years; Anticipation forward points the view. The mother, wi her needle and her sheers, Gar auld claes look amaist as weel’s the now.

The father, mixes a’ wi admonition due ” Once and again the difficulties of life are encountered, and shortly after ho reached the age of manhood his father’s affairs are once more embarrassed, and death only saved him from a debtor’s prison. Our poet’s recollections of these scenes are recorded in his “ Twa Dogs ” “ Poor tenant bodies scant o’ cash

How they maun thole a factor’s snash.” During this and the remainder of his life ho was a strange mixture of much that was good and much that was bad. Far too often irregular—far too often giving way to his fierce passions for he did nothing by halves —we find him regretting his misdeeds and seeking for improvement, and running riot as before. Other scenes he passed through, cold, wild, gay, bright, melancholy, and we find him in Edinburgh, courted and lionised by the lovely and the great; but whose ;

friendship, like the flowers of the streams speedily died. Had there been one kind Chistian hand to have grasped his in genuine genial friendship what might that man not have been’ Returning to his naive county, he spent the few remaioing years of his life in uncongenial pursuits, and at last we rejoice to think of him quietly and calmly strolling by the banks of the Nith, reading the “sacred page,” preparing to mingle in the sea of eternity. No poet that I am aware of has handled his own character so freely, and when we read and hear the stem condemnations of his life, we are forced in justice to ask was he the person he represe ted himself to bo? and if so, was he really so infamous in his day, as his traducers depict? Remember the code of morality among men changes—what is right to-day may be reckoned wrong to-morrow. True, virtue is virtue and vice vice in all ages, but some ages have seen d irkly, and what one generation now counts evil another did not. The fault lies with man, not with the lawgiver. And is there no advancement in the human family—is there and has there been no refinement of thought, feeling, action ? Some deeds of our forefathers in war might deserve our condemnation —if they knew better : likewise also much of their s >cial economy is open to our reprobation—if they knew any better. In Burns’s days, and not very long ago, the drinking habits of onr country were much worse than they are now. Then it was no disgrace to be seen the worse for liquor, and he was still counted a gentleman and received into the society of ladies even when inebriated ; and Bums himself has told us truly in stanzis in his “Twa Dogs,” and “Holy Friar,” and other pieces, how frequent and excessive was the use of spirits. We must therefore consider the times and its morality, ere we condemn him even out of his ovvu mouth. But the temptations to which he was exposed, and the wild boisterous mirth and acclimations with which these effusions ou which he is condemned would be received by his wild and thongl tless c mpanions. spurred him on to pen many pieces which in after years he must bitterly have repented. His perfect hatred of hypocrisy, self-couceit, aud self-righteous* lie's urged him to give utterances that, though startling, and to many objectionable, have lived aud will yet live, though marred by many imperfections. Considering, then, the days in which he lived, and the tempta. tious to license held out to him, I can nevi r believe that Burns was very much worse than many of his neighbo.s ; and had he had the hypocrisy of many of his day, ho was quite able to have concealed many of his blemishes—certainly not published them abroad—and palmed liimself on the world as one of the ‘ 1 unco guid but his sterling honesty precluded any such fraud, and he has preferred—if not inconsistent to say so—to blacken his character thoughtlessly amid his wild moments, rather than apin. a white raiment he had no claim to. Bit why these remarks ? Simply because it has not yet ceased to be the fashion among a certain class to defame the poet’s name, and refuse him the rank and title his genius demauds. Do those who denounce him and blame us for celebrating his natal day fancy for a single moment that we and the thousands of our and his countrymen of all ages and all over tne world meet to glory in his shame?—that we hold high revels in his name, and act what he wrote aud perhaps acted too—

“ Wha first shal' rise to gang awa’ A cuckold coward shall he be ; What first beneath his chair shall fa’The same is king auung us three.” No—and shame to the man who t links it. We meet, and will meet if spared, to honor the national bard who struck a true chord in our national hearts and for our native land —who has sung the sweetest songs—the homeliest songs—who is the songster of love —the patriot bard heaven beffn and bred in that quarter of our country which had for centuries been the battle field of liberty. Taught from his youth to know the early ballads of his country—to read the stirring lives of Wallace and Bruce, to visit the fields once stained with the blood of Scotland’s bravest sons shed in defence of her national and religious liberty, the castles and towns with the r traditions of resistance to tyranny and seme of them, like the Barns of Ayr, of terrible revenge; the ruined hilts, moss hags, and cairns on the lone hill sides, telling of persecution for conscience sake—all these formed within him the life and liberty of the freeman and a horror of the chains of the slave, above all of the slavery of the mind. No, wonder wo read his outbursts of patriotism, not as of a soul long pent up and which had burst its chams, but an honest outpouring of gratitude for such an estimable heavenly blessing—Freedom, Listen to hia burning words—- “ At Wallace’ name what Scottish blood

But boils up in a spring title flood. Oft have our fearless fathers strode By Wallace side, Still pressing onward, red wat shod, Or glorious died. 0 Thou ! who found the patriotic tide That stream ;d through Wallace’s undaunted

heart, Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride Or nobly die—the seeped glorious part.”

And “ Scots wha hao” has letl the elans to victory in Egypt, Spain, India, Crimea, Africa, and America. Though he has lashed the clergy of his day most unmercifully, it was not for a proper want of respect to the great cause they pled, but when w» find that a bitter rancour existed between different parties of one common church, holding the same fundamental doctrines, and which incitcd.to most unchristianlike and uncharitable feelings and conduct, when rank modetism pervaded the church, making it almost sleep the sleep of death, and when institutions well adapted at one time to the stati of the country were being discovered to be very very unsuitable to a. change of circumstances and a change of clergy, if the large hearted, pious, patriot, non-conformirg minister had died out, and their influence had almost ceased —there is no wonder that he gave vent to his burning sarcasm. Bred in a covenanter’s house, he gives us his picture of a covenanter’s home, and in giving, glories in it “ Compared with this new poor religious pndo In all the pomp of method and of art. ’ To his last days his early education was never shaken off. What does he say in his letter to a young friend — “ The Great Creator to revere, Must sure become the creature, But still the preaching can’t forbear And ev’n the rigid feature. Yet ne'er with wits profane to range, Be complaisance extended ; An atheist laugh’s a poor exchange For Diety offended. ” And when in company with one who reviled the covenant, his reply was ready and pertinent —

“The solemn League and covenant Cost Scotland blood—cost Scotland tears ;

But it sealed Freedom’s sacred cause If thou’rt a slave indulge thy sneers.” And no doubt, thinking of the cruel persecutions for liberty of conscience, he thunders out to the Dumfries Volunteers—- “ The kettle o’ the Kirk and State,

Perhaps a clout may fall in’t.” Where such sentiments are held personal independence is a natural consequence ; and how refreshing to read his letters to those high above him in worldly position, and not detect the cringing too common among mean6r minds, even where necessity does not demand it. How contemptible did the man look in his eyes to whom he had addressed that cutting epigram—- “ What of earls with whom you have supt, And of dukes that you have dined with yestreen ” His motto was, “A man’s a man for a’ that.” TTis politics, slightly tinged with Jacobitism, were always fearlessly expressed, and did good to his country ; and it must be a matter o£ regret that party spirit stept hr to prevent the Governments of the day providing for such a man in a manner fitting his tastes. We are somewhat wiser in our day. He has been accused of illiberality of sentiment; but if anyone will take the trouble to compare him with others who lived in his day, no lover of the poet will fear the result. Nay, more, I challenge for Burns a liberality awauting too often in our day; for thou a essentially Scottish, and glorying in her history, her sons, aud her scenery, not one word, as far as I recollect, has he uttered in disparagement of any other land. Though national, ho is yet cosmopolitan ; and are not these words now household—- “ Then let us pray that come it may, And come it shall for a’ that,” Time will iot permit me to refer to his love songs—the circumstances under which they are produced —the knowledge of the fair sex, which is so wonderful in some of them—the d pth of feeling which is displayed in them all, or the richness of the gems of poetry that can be gathered from them. Nor can I touch as 1 intended doing on the fund of humor that abounds through all his productions. Neither can I treat of him as a satirist, as one of the masters of this style of writing, whose sarcasm did not smite like Saladin’s sabre, but fell like the battle-axe of Richard Occur de Leon.

Permit me to say in closing that I know of no poet or prose writer who possessed such a natural flow of ideas and words. There is no constraint, no laboring, no forcing, in his “ Epistles to Dasie, Laprack. Simpson and Eankine,” “ The Author’s earnest Cry and Prayer,” “Death and Dr Hornbook,” and many others we have perfect pictures in ideas and words, and all so natural that it is wonderful how the man could have penned the torrents that gushed forth. In his prose letter and journals we have the same feature, and though they are too much overlooked, they are worth the study of anyone who wishes to be a good letter writer—a faculty few acquire, Jn these, as in others of his composition, we see into the man’s heart—there is no falsehood brooding there; but whether it be in sickness or health, joy or sorrow, unbounded hilarity or extreme depression, wc obtain a pevfr ct and true picture of the man, and see in him one of the most gifted of God’s creatures. I rejoice to think that under the auspices of the Caledonian Society, of which, sir, you are president, a knowledge of the poet’s work is so often brought before the rising generation of this Scottish colony ; and God forbid that the day should ever come when his works will ho a sealed book to any colonist far less to that of Otago. Craving forbearance on your part for the imperfect manner in which I have brought the Bard on this occasion before your notice, I ask you to drink the memory of “ Robert Burns,” who, though death, yet speaketh. Mr Stables, in a speech which we regret we cannot spare room for, proposed “The poets of Scotland and other national poets.” “The Caledoiran Society” was proposed by Mr Barr, who pointed out the benefits conferred through it as a “benevolent association.” Mr Mansfield proposed “ Our native land;” Mr Anderson, “The trade and industry of Otago j u Mr K. Ramsay, “ The ladies; 4 ’ and the chairman. “The press.” The toasts were responded to by Messrs Kirkcaldy, Marshall, Mansfield, Westropp, and Bell. Several songs appropriate to the occasion were sung by different gentlemen ;■ and we may say a more enjoyable reunion has never been held in Dunedin. It is needless to say the provision by Mr Wain was all that could be desired. Mr Moss presided at the piano.