The Real Robert Burns Part 1

The Real Robert Burns.

by J. L. Hughes.

FOREWORD.

The writer of the following pages learned years ago to reverence the memories of Burns and d.i.c.kens. Frequently hearing one or the other attacked from platform or pulpit, and believing both to be great interpreters of the highest things taught by Christ, as the basis of the development of humanity towards the Divine, he resolved that some day he would try to help the world to understand correctly the work of these two great men. His book, _d.i.c.kens as an Educator_, has helped to give a new conception of d.i.c.kens, as an educational pioneer and as a philosopher. The purpose of this book is to show that Burns was well educated, and that both in his poems and in his letters he was an unsurpa.s.sed exponent of the highest human ideals yet expressed of religion--democracy based on the value of the individual soul, brotherhood, love, and the philosophy of human life.

The writer believes that gossiping in regard to the weakness of the living is indecent and degrading, but that it is pardonable as compared with the debasing practice of gossiping about the weaknesses of the dead. Those who can wallow in the muck of degraded biographers are only a degree less wicked than the biographers themselves, who sin against the dead, and sin against the living by providing debasing matter for them to read.

The evidence to prove the positions claimed to be true in this book is mainly taken from the poems and letters of Burns himself. Some may doubt the sincerity of Burns. Carlyle had no doubt about his sincerity or his honesty. He says of the popularity of Burns: 'The grounds of so singular and wide a popularity, which extends, in a literal sense, from the palace to the hut, and over all regions where the English tongue is spoken, are well worth inquiring into. After every just deduction, it seems to imply some rare excellence in these works. What is that excellence? To answer this question will not lead us far. The excellence of Burns is, indeed, among the rarest, whether in poetry or in prose, but, at the same time, it is plain and easily recognised--_his sincerity, his indisputable air of truth_.'

Speaking of the moral character of Burns, Carlyle said: 'We are far from regarding him as guilty before the world, as guiltier than the average; nay, from doubting that _he is less guilty than one of ten thousand_....

What he _did_ under such circ.u.mstances, and what he _forbore to do_, alike fill us with astonishment at the _natural strength and worth of his character_.'

Shakespeare says in _Hamlet_: 'Ay, sir, to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.' Carlyle chose Burns as one of ten thousand.

These quotations should help two cla.s.ses of men: the 'unco guid,' who believe evil stories, most of which had no real foundation; and those professed lovers of Burns who love him for his weaknesses. The real Robert Burns was not weak enough to suit either of these two cla.s.ses. 'Less guilty than one in ten thousand' is a high standard.

To do something to help all men and women to a juster understanding of the real Robert Burns is the aim of the writer. Let us learn, and ever remember, that he was a reverent writer about religion, a clear interpreter of Christ's teaching of democracy and brotherhood, a profound philosopher, and the author of the purest love-songs ever written.

THE REAL ROBERT BURNS.

CHAPTER I.

THE TRUE VALUES OF BIOGRAPHY.

A man's biography should relate the story of his development in power, and his achievements for his fellow-men. Biography can justify itself only in two ways: by revealing the agencies and experiences that formed a man's character and aided in the growth of his highest powers; and by relating the things he achieved for humanity, and the processes by which he achieved them.

Only the good in the lives of great men should be recorded in biographies.

To relate the evil men do, or describe their weaknesses, is not only objectionable, it is in every way execrable. It degrades those who write it and those who read it. Biography should not be mainly a story; it should be a revelation, not of evil, but of good. It should unfold and impress the value of the visions of the great man whose biography is being written, and his success in revealing his high visions to his fellow-men.

It should tell the things he achieved or produced to make the world better; the things that aid in the growth of humanity towards the divine.

The biographer who tells of evils is, from thoughtlessness or malevolence, a mischievous enemy of mankind.

No man's memory was ever more unjustly dealt with than the memory of Robert Burns. His first editor published many poems that Burns said on his death-bed should be allowed 'to sink into oblivion,' and told all of weakness that he could learn in order that he might be regarded as just.

He considered justice to himself of more consequence than justice to Burns, or to humanity. His only claim to be remembered is the fact that he prepared the poems of Burns for publication, and wrote his biography. It is much to be regretted that he had not higher ideals of what a biography should be, not merely for the memory of the man about whom it is written, but for its influence in enlightening and uplifting those who read it.

Biographers should reveal not weaknesses, but the things achieved for G.o.d and humanity.

Carlyle, writing of the biographers of Burns, says: 'His former biographers have done something, no doubt, but by no means a great deal, to a.s.sist us. Dr Currie and Mr Walker, the princ.i.p.al of these writers, have both, we think, mistaken one important thing: their own and the world's true relation to the author, and the style in which it became such men to think and to speak of such a man. Dr Currie loved the poet truly, more perhaps than he avowed to his readers, or even to himself; yet he everywhere introduces him with a certain patronising, apologetic air, as if the polite public might think it strange and half unwarrantable that he, a man of science, a scholar and a gentleman, should do such honour to a rustic. In all this, however, we readily admit that his fault was not want of love, but weakness of faith; and regret that the first and kindest of all our poet's biographers should not have seen farther, or believed more boldly what he saw. Mr Walker offends more deeply in the same kind, and both err alike in presenting us with a detached catalogue of his attributes, virtues, and vices, _instead of a delineation of the resulting character as a living unity_.'

The biographers of Robert Burns criticised reputed defects of his--defects common among men of all cla.s.ses and all professions in his time--but failed to give him credit for his revelations of divine wisdom. They bemoaned his lack of religion--though he was a reverently religious man--instead of telling the simple truth that he was the greatest religious reformer of his time in any part of the world. They said he was not a Christian because he did not perform certain ceremonies required by the churches, when freer and less bigoted men would have told the real fact, that he was one of the world's greatest interpreters of Christ's highest ideals--democracy and brotherhood. He still holds that high rank.

They related idle gossip about his vanity and other trivial stories, instead of being content with proclaiming him the greatest genius of his time in the comprehensiveness of his visions, and in the scope of his powers. Some of them tried to prove that he was not a loyal man; they should have revealed him as the giant leader of men in making them conscious of the value of liberty and of the right of every man to its fullest enjoyment.

The oft-repeated charge of disloyalty was disproved when the charge was made during the life of Burns, but the false accusation has been accepted as a fact by many people to the present time. Fortunately the records of the Dumfries Volunteers have been discovered recently, and Mr William Will has published them in a book ent.i.tled _Robert Burns as a Volunteer_.

They prove most conclusively that Burns was a truly loyal man. When the Provost of Dumfries called a meeting of the citizens of Dumfries to consider the need of establis.h.i.+ng a company of Volunteers Burns attended the meeting, and was chosen as a member of a small committee to write to the king asking permission to form a company. When permission was granted by the king, Burns joined the company on the night when it was first organised, and sat up most of the night composing 'The Dumfries Volunteers,' the most inspiring poem of its kind ever written. It did more to arouse the people of Scotland and England to put down the bolshevism of the time than any other loyal propaganda.

The minutes of the Volunteer Company in Dumfries give a perfect answer to the basest slander ever made against Burns--that he had sunk so low as a hopelessly vile drunkard the respectable people of Dumfries would not a.s.sociate with him; that he was ostracised by the community at large. Yet this 'ostracised man' was chosen by the best citizens of Dumfries as one of the committee to write to King George, and was elected as a member of the committee to manage the company. This slander was so generally accepted in Carlyle's time that even Carlyle himself wrote that Burns did not die too soon, as he had lost the respect of his fellow-men, and had lost also the power to write. His first statement is proved to have no true foundation by the record of the Dumfries Volunteer Company, and the second by the fact that Burns wrote the greatest poem ever written by any man to interpret Christ's highest visions, democracy and brotherhood, 'A Man's a Man for a' That,' the year before he died, and 'The Dumfries Volunteers.' The second year before his death he wrote 'The Tree of Liberty' and 'The Ode to Liberty,' and the third year before he died he wrote the clarion call to fight in defence of freedom, 'Scots, wha hae.'

These poems have no equals in any literature of their kind. During the same three years of his life he wrote one hundred and seventeen other fine songs and sent them to Edinburgh for publication, the last one on the ninth day before his death. It should be remembered, too, that Burns had to ride two hundred miles each week in the discharge of his duty to the government; and that after the organisation of the Volunteer Company he had to drill four hours each week, and attend the meetings of the company committee. The minutes of the company show he was never fined for absence.

The last meeting he attended before his fatal illness was called to prepare a letter of grat.i.tude to G.o.d for preserving the life of the king when the London bolshevistic mob tried to kill him on his way to the House of Commons. a.s.sisting to prepare this letter to the king was the last public act of Burns.

Had his weaknesses been tenfold what they were, his biographers should have said nothing about them, for in spite of his human weakness he had divine power to reveal to all men Christ's teachings--democracy and brotherhood, based on the value of the individual soul. He was also the greatest poet of religion, ethics, and love; and he holds a high place among the loving interpreters of Nature.

To relate facts in his life to account for the development of his powers, so that he was able to be so great a revealer of the highest things in the lives of men and women, should have been the work of his biographers.

It is worthy of note that Wordsworth wrote to the publishers of the biography of Burns in regard to the true att.i.tude of a biographer. He objected to recording imputed failings, and expressed indignation at Dr Currie for devoting so much attention to the infirmities of Burns.

Chambers and Douglas were in most respects better than his other early biographers. The Rev. Lauchlan MacLean Watt, of Edinburgh, wrote for the Nation's Library in 1914 the sanest, truest book yet written about Burns.

CHAPTER II.

THE EDUCATIONAL ADVANTAGES OF BURNS.

Many people still speak of Burns as an 'uneducated man.' Although a farmer, he was in reality a well-educated man. He was not a finished scholar in the accepted sense of the universities, but both in his poetry and in his unusually forceful and polished prose he was superior to most of the university men of his time. He had read many books, the best books that his intelligent father could buy, or that he could borrow from friends or from libraries. In addition to school-books, he names the following among those books read in his youth and young manhood--_The Spectator_, Pope's Works, Shakespeare, Works on Agriculture, _The Pantheon_, Locke's _Essay on the Human Understanding_, Stackhouse's _History of the Bible_, Justice's _British Gardener_, Boyle Lectures, Allan Ramsay's Works, Doctor Taylor's _Doctrine of Original Sin_, _A Select Collection of English Songs_, Hervey's _Meditations_, Thomson's Works, Shenstone's Works, _The Letters by the Wits of Queen Anne's Reign_, Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_, Mackenzie's _The Man of Feeling_, Macpherson's _Ossian_, two volumes of _Pamela_, and one novel by Smollett, _Ferdinand, Count Fathom_. In addition to these he had read some French and some Latin books, guided by one of the greatest teachers of his time, John Murdoch, who was so great that when he established a private school in London his fame spread to France, and some leading young men, notably Talleyrand, came to receive his training and inspiration.

William Burns read regularly at night to his two sons, Robert and Gilbert, and after the reading the three fellow-students discussed the matter that had been read, each from his own individual standpoint. As the boys grew older they read books during their meals, so earnest were they in their desire to become acquainted with the best thought of the world's leaders, so far as it was available. David Sillar has stated that Robert generally carried a book with him when he was alone, that he might read and think.

When Robert settled at Ellisland he aroused an interest among the people of the district, and succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng a circulating library.

His father, though a labourer, was supremely desirous that his family should be educated and thoughtful. This desire prompted him to become a farmer, that he might keep his family at home. He was an independent thinker himself, and by example and experience he trained his sons to love reading and to think independently. Robert never thought he was thinking when he let other people's thoughts run through his mind.

The result of the reading and thinking which their father led Robert and Gilbert to do was most gratifying. The influence on Robert's mind must be recognised. He became not only a great writer in prose and in poetry, but a great orator as well. He stood modestly, but conscious of his power, and proved his superiority both in conversation and impromptu oratory to the leading university men of his time in Edinburgh. Gilbert, too, became an original thinker and a writer of clear and forceful English. In a long letter to Dr Currie he discussed very profoundly and very independently some deep psychological ideas in excellent language. Few men of his time could have written more thoughtfully or more definitely. As ill.u.s.trations of Robert's learning, as well as of his independent thought in relating the books he read to each other and to human life, two instances are worth recording. First, in a letter to Dr Moore,[1] of London, an author of some distinction, who had sent him a copy of one of his books, Burns said, 1790: 'You were pleased to express a wish for my opinion of your work, which so flattered me that nothing less would serve my overweening fancy than a formal criticism on the book. In fact, I have gravely planned a comparative view of you, Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett in your different qualities and merits as novel writers. This, I own, betrays my ridiculous vanity, and I may probably never bring the business to bear, but I am fond of the spirit young Elihu shows in the Book of Job--"And I said, I will also declare my opinion."'

To Mrs Dunlop he wrote, 1788: 'Dryden's _Virgil_ has delighted me. I do not know whether the critics will agree with me, but the _Georgics_ are to me by far the best of Virgil. It is indeed a species of writing entirely new to me, and has filled my head with a thousand fancies of emulation....

I own I am disappointed in the _aeneid_. Faultless correctness may please, and does highly please, the letter critic; but to that awful character I have not the most distant pretensions. I do not know whether I do not hazard my pretensions to be a critic of any kind, when I say that I think Virgil, in many instances, a servile copier of Homer. If I had the _Odyssey_ by me, I could parallel many pa.s.sages where Virgil has evidently copied, but by no means improved, Homer. Nor can I think there is anything of this owing to the translators; for from everything I have seen of Dryden, I think him in genius and fluency of language Pope's Master.'

But a small percentage of university graduates of his time could have written independent criticisms, wise or otherwise, of Homer and Virgil, or even of English writers, as clearly as Burns did. They could have told what the opinions of other people were in regard to Homer and Virgil; they could have told what they had been told. Burns had been trained to think by his father, and to express his own thoughts about the books he read; they had merely been informed. The advantage in real education was greatly in favour of Burns. Their memories had been stored with opinions of others; his mind had been trained to read carefully, to relate the thoughts of others to life, to decide as to their wisdom, and to think independently himself. His education from books was somewhat limited, but the development of his mind that came from discussions of the value of the matter read was vital, and helped him to relate himself to men, to nature around him, to the universe, and to G.o.d.

In schools Burns had not a very extended experience. When six years old he was sent to a small school beside the mill on the Doon at Alloway. His teacher gave up the school soon after Burns began to attend it. Mr Burns secured the co-operation of several of his neighbours, and they engaged a young man named Murdoch to teach their children, agreeing to take him in turn as their guest, and to pay him a small salary. The fact that John Murdoch formed a high estimate of Mr Burns is a proof of the ability and sincerity of the father of the poet.

When Burns was seven years old his father removed to Mount Oliphant farm, but Robert continued to attend the school of Mr Murdoch, about two miles away, in Alloway. The books used were a spelling-book, the New Testament, the Bible, Mason's _Collection of Prose and Verse_, and Fisher's _English Grammar_.

Mr Murdoch gave up his Alloway school when Burns was nine years old. After that time the teacher of his sons was their father. He taught them arithmetic, and bought them Salmon's _Geographical Grammar_, Derham's _Physico- and Astro-Theology_, Hay's _Wisdom of G.o.d in the Creation_, and the _History of the Reigns of James I. and Charles I. of England_. Robert, when eleven years old, showed a deep interest in the study of grammar and language, and 'excelled as a critic in substantives, verbs, and participles.' In his twelfth year he was kindled in his patriotic spirit by the _Life of Sir William Wallace_. Wallace remained a hero to him throughout his life. In his thirty-fifth year he wrote the grandest call to the defence of liberty ever written, beginning:

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled.

In his eleventh year, which seemed to be a kindling epoch in his mind, his mother's brother gave him a collection of _Letters by the Wits of Queen Anne's Reign_. He read them over and over again, greatly delighted by both their contents and their literary style. They had a distinct influence in forming his own prose style, as during his twelfth year he conducted an imaginary correspondence of quite an extensive character and in a stately style.