ROBERT BURNS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 21, 24 January 1914, Page 2

ROBERT BURNS.

SCOTLAND’S REPRESENTATIVE MAN.

(Walter Oreig, in the Sydney Telegraph.)

A true poet—a man in whose heart resides some effluence of wisdom, some tone of the “Eternal Melodies”—is the most precious gift that can he bestowed on a generation ; his life is a- rich lesson to us, and we mourn his death as that of a benefactor who loved and taught us.— Carlyle.

It is now over 100 years since Scotland found a voice, and the fame of the Sweet Singer of Scotia was never greater. Robert Burns has been dead for more than 100 years, but his memory is kept green wherever the sons and daughters of Scotland are found. The genius of Burns has been a theme of many an able pen, and orators all over the Englishspeaking world have exhausted, the language in laying tributes on his tomb. So much, indeed, have the praises of Burns been sung, spoken, and written that the subject has long been a hackneyed one, and has more than once produced an effect contrary to what Hurns-worshippers intended. But J make no apology for this essay, as it deals with a phase of the subject which has been neglected. Burns Amongst the Poets.

Burns’ position among poets, as one of the “Sacred Band of Immortals,” is an assured one. Fame he did not lack in liis brief, unhappy lifetime, but it was nothing to that accorded his “immortal memory.” Popular opinion in literary matters, in the long run, is a good test. If a man’s fame endures a century after his death, and his songs are “familiar on our tongues as household words,” his fame has stood the real test, and rests on a sure foundation. The fame of Hums far transcends that of any English writer. It is not to a select coterie that the Hard of Scotia appeals. Notwithstanding his age and tongue, lit 1 reached the heart of the Englishspeaking people, and has drawn forth the homage of men to whom his vernacular was a crude, harsh, unmelodious dialect. The feeling that Burns inspires is one of brotherhood _we feel that he is a whole man. the friend and brother of us all. Unlike the great stage manager of human life, Shakespeare, who from

behind the scenes manipulated his characters, painting human life in imperishable scenes for all time, the Scots bard comes down amongst ns, fraternises with ns; we feel that he is one of ns, that we can shake his hand, and feel' the “friendly glow” of the large-hearted peasant. The man himself, like the songs he sang, goes straight to the heart. Literature is the true democracy. Like the grim king of terrors, it makes all men

equal. Hums’ poems brush aside all distinctions of class, or caste, or creed; he gets to the real man, and not the man’s position in life. It is this touch of Nature in him that makes him kin to the whole world. Consider briefly his work as a poet; what a rare natural genius his was. How sweet, and tender and true, were his ineffable lyrics. His love songs are so simple and natural that- we feel disposed to doubt their genius. For example;— 0 my hive is like a red rod rose, That’s newly sprung ill June; O my hive is like the melody That’s sweetly played in tune. The simplicity of- these lines is such that one feels there is nothing in them ; but try to write like that, and the amateur will realise that those lines are the product of true genius. The figures are simple; anyone can understand them ; the words have welled up from the heart; they were felt before being written. And it is because all men have to some degree felt as Burns felt that lie goes home to the heart. We have all felt as Burns felt, hut could find no tongue to body forth— What we can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Burns a National Type. It is with the character of Burns [ here propose to deal; not with the mistaken idea of white-washing him ; the man can stand as he is wrtn all his faults. Burns was a true type of his fellow-countrymen. He is the representative man of his country. The more we study the man, Jiis character, life, and work, the truer will this statement appear. Burns was an epitome of his native land—her history, her aspirations, her faith, her song, her daily life. Consider how the elements so mixed in him—a man like all Scotsmen ol a deeply religious nature, yet who lived in doubt, and satirised the narrowminded priesthood of his day; a man who wrote poems “as pure as ice, and as chaste as snow,” yet wrote ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer,” and others of a like sort. So do the sublime and the profligate mingle and jostle on life’s highway. His sturdy, manly independence was characteristic of his J countrymen, but who does not feel that his contact -with the Scottish aristocracy did him less good than harm As a Scot he was brave, patriotic, radical. Not dour, nor canny, nor mean, as all Scotsmen are reckoned by ignorant critics; he was rich in humor that has never been surpassed, giving'the lie to the egregious- idea, that .the-Soot-has- uovwit. His intense love of liberty, his thoughtful outlook on life, his hatred of shams and useless conventions, his abounding good nature and good fellowship, all these traits in his character were ami are true national characteristics. His radicalism or socialism was also a national characteristic, and in his case was brought^into high relief by his lowly station in life, and ihe age in which lie lived, perhaps most of all by the intense pride he had in his genius, and the resentment he felt at the treatment accorded by his age to men of genius. Notwithstanding his great talents, outside of nis poetic genius, which Carlyle considered'' fitted him more than most men of his day for governing men. this noble soul was condemned to 'he ignominious pursuit of “scarkhing .mid wives’ barrels.” Burns’ life was prd-determhied; had it boon other than it was we should have had no national hard. But to think that Burns, that great-hearted, generous, high-minded spirit, had to suffer “the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, is saddening in tlie extreme, and makes the blood rise rebellious iu iuir veins. Smarting under the rebuke administered by his “superior officers,” he wrote these memorable words, which have all the nerve of the hand that wrote “A Man’s a Man for a’ that” :—“Does any man tell me that my individual efforts can he of no service, and that it does not belong to my humble station to meddle with the concerns of a nation ! J I can tell him that it is on such individuals as I that a nation has to rest, both for the hand of support, and the eve of intelligence. The uninformed mob may swell a nation’s bulk, and the titled, tinselled, courtly throng may he its feathered ornament, but the number of those who are elevated enough in life to reason and reflect, vet low enough to keep clear of the venal contagion of a court—these are a nation’s strength.” There spoke Ihe true Scot. In noble words, wrung from him while smarting from the insult offered on the same occasion by “superiors,” Burns referred fo himself as “a poor man from birth, and an exciseman by necessity; the sterling of his British heart oppression might crush, hut could not subdue.”

Contemplating tlie history of Scotland, and hearing in mind the tact that Burns is the poet out of the thousands Scotland produced who has in every sense become the poet of Ids people, we see no other memorable Scotsman so lit and equipped hy Nature to he the measure of his fellowcountrymen. This is the secret of Bnrns-worfthip in Scotland, as the loveahleuess of the man, seen in Ids life uo less than in his work, has keen the chief cause of Ids being “revered abroad.” Tie himself was among the first to recognise merit in others:

notwithstanding ,iiis avowed iovo of fame, lie for long held poets, such as Ferguson and Ramsay, as Jus masters. ’Those men have become lesser stars in tlie lirmaiuent of Scottish poetry, the great iliuminun 1 being Hubert Burns. The nature of Burns was well shown in his kindly act, performed ;u the height of his popularity, when lie was being lionised in Edinburgh, in erecting and paying for a monument over the grave of the unfortuute Ferguson, a poet of rare merit, not unlike Burns himself, whose lamp of genius and life was quenched within the melancholy wall's of a madhouse. No nobler tribute to the genius of poor, ill-fated Eerguson was ever penned than the pathetic words carved on the plain stone standing in the kirkyard in High-street:—

NO sculptured marble here nor pompous lay, No storied urn nor animated bust This simple stone directs pale Scotia’; wav

To pour her sorrows o’er her poet dust. The Scot as a Man of Feeling.

The Scottish character is a complex one—a fact generally overlooked. The strong dash of Keltic blood in the veins of the Scot was a potent factor in the moulding of tire national character, if Burns was, as I claim, the representative Scotsman, then Teutonic stolidity is not so prominent a feature of the national character as is generally supposed. Indeed, the Scots are more emotional than the English as a’nation ; they have more dash as fighters, and the Scottish mob of the old days was as fierce and determined a rebel crew as could he found in the world. But other traits—the tenderness and pathos of the Scots character—arc seen in all its wonder and beauty in the grand old ballads of the nation—such ballads as “Auld Itobiu Cray.” “A Wee Bird Cara,” “The Auld Hoo.se,” and countless others known to all lovers of song, irrespective of nationality.

Again, it has been considered that Scots were dour, puritanical bigots in religion. But the dismal creed of Calvin was cruelly satirised by Burns, who may be said to have killed it; Carlyle would none of it; and the greatest sceptic of his day, and by some good judges considered the greatest philosopher, was David Hume, the Scotsman. Other Great Scotsmen. Scotland has produced a marvellous number of great men, but none 1 in whom all the lights and shades of the national character were mingled as in itobert Burns. The : great heroes of old, Wallace, Douglas, and Bruce, ‘lire too far in the distant past' to* be' regarded as types of their nation; although their spirit l ■survives. GVorge Buchanan, a true national type,' was too purely a learned man; Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle were' too correct in their lives to typify the Scottish people. Take him for all in all, Robert Burns was the voice ami the representative man of ■ his country ; her strength,;;hen> weaknessn he l )' 1 pride, independence, faith, love oi freedom, truth, and honesty were all faithfully.reflected in the life and song of the poet hero. By hint his country may he judged, content!ito stand or all along with her representative-man. The poet alone is the line standard >f bis fellow-man. if bo is true to bis high calling be u a laiihfnl delineate; ■if his countrymen. 1 claim this for itobert Burns—.that be, more than any other individual Scotsman, stands for the rank and tile of ids fellow-country-men, the men who bled and died with Wallace; the men who have shed lus"re on their native land by their work Mi every sphere of life, and wlio.se virues and frailitios alike are recorded 1 1 the pages o[ Burns. They who made be glorious history of Scotland need •o better singer ■ than Burns, to whom II men, saints and sinners alike, have ••ouderod grateful homage. His faults vore those of his age and country: iat tire was responsible for them. Those things do not happen by chance, i’ll tv Bard of Coile, as he loved to call himself, was one of the noblest works >!' God—an honest man—and could not, have been other than he was. Let those who so often render him lip service, while their hearts are far from biin, look to their ways, ponder over the lesson of his life, and ask themselves whether Burns would not, were lie alive, pour out the vials of his wrath m their lives and works. Burns glorified his native land ; lie made our enemies respect us. Harmony is our being’s end and aim, ami human love is the great harmoniser of existence. Lei us be grateful to the sons of song who brought dowu tho celestial harmony to earth; who have woven a girdle of brotherhood, which will one day encircle the earth, and realise the prophetic words of Burns, the poet of Scotland and of humanity;

When men to man the world own: Shall brithers he for a’ that. Amen, so may it be!