THOMAS CARLYLE'S
ESSAY ON BURNS (1828)
Part 2
It is in this last shape that Burns presents
himself. Born in an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in
a condition the most disadvantageous, where his mind, if it
accomplished aught, must accomplish it under the pressure of continual
bodily toil, nay, of penury and desponding apprehension of the worst
evils, and with no furtherance but such knowledge as dwells in a poor
man's hut, and the rhymes of a Fergusson or Ramsay for his standard of
beauty, he sinks not under all these impediments : through the fogs
and darkness of that obscure region his lynx eye discerns the true
relations of the world and human life; he grows into intellectual
strength, and trains himself into intellectual expertness. Impelled by
the expansive movement of his own irrepressible soul, he struggles
forward into the general view ; and with haughty modesty lays down
before us, as the fruit of his labour, a gift, which Time has now
pronounced imperishable. Add to all this, that his darksome drudging
childhood and youth was by far the kindliest era of his whole life ;
and that he died in his thirty-seventh year : and then ask, if it be
strange that his poems are imperfect, and of small extent, or that his
genius attained no mastery in its arts ? Alas, his Sun shone as
through a tropical tornado ; and the pale Shadow of Death eclipsed it
at noon ! Shrouded in such baleful vapours, the genius of Burns was
never seen in clear azure splendour, enlightening the world ; but some
beams from it did, by fits, pierce through ; and it tinted those clouds with rainbow and orient colours, into a glory and stern
grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder and tears !
We are anxious not to exaggerate : for it is
exposition rather than admiration that our readers require of us here
; and yet to avoid some tendency to that side is no easy matter. We
love Burns, and we pity him; and love and pity are prone to magnify.
Criticism, it is sometimes thought, should be a cold business ; we are
not so sure of this ; but , at all events, our concern with Burns is
not exclusively that of critics. True and genial as his poetry must
appear, it is not chiefly as a poet, but as a man, that he interests
and affects us. He was often advised to write a tragedy ; time and
means were not lent him for this; but through life he enacted a
tragedy, and one of the deepest. We question whether the world has
since witnessed so utterly sad a scene ; whether Napoleon himself,
left to brawl with Sir Hudson Lowe, and perish on his rock, " amid the
melancholy main," presented to the reflecting mind such a " spectacle
of pity and fear" as did this intrinsically nobler, gentler, and
perhaps greater soul, wasting itself away in a hopeless struggle with
base entanglements, which coiled closer and closer round him, till
only death opened him an outlet. Conquerors are a class of men with
whom, for most part, the world could well dispense ; nor can the hard
intellect, the unsympathising loftiness, and high but selfish
enthusiasm of such persons, inspire us in general with any affection ;
at best it may excite amazement ; and their fall, like that of a
pyramid, will be beheld with a certain sadness and awe. But 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 be
bestowed on a generation : we see in him a freer, purer development of
whatever is noblest in ourselves ; his life is a rich lesson to us :
and we mourn his death as that of a benefactor who loved and taught
us.
Such a gift had Nature, in her bounty,
bestowed on us in Robert Burns ; but with queenlike indifference she
cast it from her hand, like a thing of no moment ; and it was defaced
and torn asunder, as an idle bauble, before we recognised it. To the
ill-starred Burns was given the power of making man's life more
venerable, but that of wisely guiding his own life was not given.
Destiny,—for so in our ignorance we must speak,—his faults, the faults
of others, proved too hard for him ; and that spirit, which might have
soared could it but have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious
faculties trodden under foot in the blossom ; and died, we may almost
say, without ever having lived. And so kind and warm a soul ; so full
of inborn riches, of love to all living and lifeless things ! How his
heart flows out in Sympathy over universal Nature ; and in her
bleakest provinces discerns a beauty and a meaning ! The "Daisy" falls
not unheeded under his plough-share; nor the ruined nest of that "
wee, cowering, timorous beastie," cast forth, after all its provident
pains, to "thole the sleety dribble and cranreuch cauld." The "hoar
visage" of Winter delights him; he dwells with a sad and oft-returning
fondness on these scenes of solemn desolation; but the voice of the
tempest becomes an anthem to his ears; he loves to walk in the
sounding woods, for "it raises his thoughts to Him that walketh on
the wings of the wind." A true Poet-soul, for it needs but to be
struck, and the sound it yields will be music ! But observe him
chiefly as he mingles with his brother men. What warm,
all-comprehending fellow-feeling; what trustful, boundless love; what
generous exaggeration of the object loved ! His rustic friend, his
nut-brown maiden, are no longer mean and homely, but a hero and a
queen, whom he prizes as the paragons of Earth. The rough scenes of
Scottish life, not seen by him in any Arcadian illusion, but in the
rude contradiction, in the smoke and soil of a too harsh reality, are
still lovely to him ; Poverty is indeed his companion, but Love also,
and Courage; the simple feelings, the worth, the nobleness, that dwell
under the straw roof, are dear and venerable to his heart: and thus
over the lowest provinces of man's existence he pours the glory of his
own soul; and they rise, in shadow and sunshine, softened and
brightened into a beauty which other eyes discern not in the highest.
He has a just self-consciousness, which too often degenerates into
pride; yet it is a noble pride, for defence, not for offence; no cold,
suspicious feeling, but a frank and social one. The Peasant Poet bears
himself, we might say, like a King in exile; he is cast among the low,
and feels himself equal to the highest; yet he claims no rank, that
none may be disputed to him. The forward he can repel, the
supercilious he can subdue; pretensions of wealth or ancestry are of
no avail with him ; there is a fire in that dark eye, under which the
" insolence of condescension" cannot thrive. In his abasement, in his
extreme need, he forgets not for a moment the majesty of Poetry and
Manhood. And yet, far as he feels himself above common men, he wanders
not apart from them, but mixes warmly in their interests; nay, throws
himself into their arms, and, as it were, entreats them to love him.
It is moving to see how, in his darkest despondency, this proud being
still seeks relief from friendship; unbosoms himself, often to the
unworthy; and, amid tears, strains to his glowing heart a heart that
knows only the name of friendship. And yet he was "quick to learn;" a
man of keen vision, before whom common disguises afforded no
concealment. His understanding saw through the hollowness even of
accomplished deceivers; but there was a generous credulity in his
heart. And so did our Peasant show himself among us ; "a soul like an
Ćolian harp, in whose strings the vulgar wind, as it passed through
them, changed itself into articulate melody." And this was he for whom
the world found no fitter business than quarrelling with smugglers and
vintners, computing Excise-dues upon tallow, and gauging ale-barrels !
In such toils was that mighty Spirit sorrowfully wasted: and a hundred
years may pass on before another such is given us to waste.
All that remains of Burns, the Writings he
has left, seem to us, as we hinted above, no more than a poor
mutilated fraction of what was in him; brief, broken glimpses of a
genius that could never show itself complete ; that wanted all things
for completeness: culture, leisure, true effort, nay, even length of
life. His poems are, with scarcely any exception, mere occasional
effusions; poured forth with little premeditation; expressing, by such
means as offered, the passion, opinion, or humour of the hour. Never
in one instance was it permitted him to grapple with any subject with
the full collection of his strength, to fuse and mould it in the
concentrated fire of his genius. To try by the strict rules of Art
such imperfect fragments would be at once unprofitable and unfair.
Nevertheless, there is something in these poems, marred and defective
as they are, which forbids the most fastidious student of poetry to
pass them by. Some sort of enduring quality they must have : for after
fifty years of the wildest vicissitudes in poetic taste, they still
continue to be read; nay, are read more and more eagerly, more and
more extensively; and this not only by literary virtuosos, and that
class upon whom transitory causes operate most strongly, but by all
classes, down to the most hard, unlettered, and truly natural class,
who read little, and especially no poetry, except because they find
pleasure in it. 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 prose ; but, at the same time, it is plain and easily
recognised : his Sincerity, his indisputable air of Truth. Here are no
fabulous woes or joys; no hollow fantastic sentimentalities; no
wiredrawn refinings, either in thought or feeling: the passion that is
traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the opinion he utters
has risen in his own understanding, and been a light to his own steps.
He does not write from hearsay, but from sight and experience; it is
the scenes that he has lived and laboured amidst that he describes :
those scenes, rude and humble as they are, have kindled beautiful
emotions in his soul, noble thoughts, and definite resolves; and he
speaks forth what is in him, not from any outward call of vanity or
interest, but because his heart is too full to be silent. He speaks it
with such melody and modulation as he can ; " in homely rustic jingle
;" but it is his own, and genuine. This is the grand secret for
finding readers and retaining them : let him who would move and
convince others, be first moved and convinced himself. Horace's rule,
Si vis me flere, is applicable in a wider sense than the literal one.
To every poet, to every writer, we might say : Be true, if you would
be believed. Let a man but speak forth with genuine earnestness the
thought, the emotion, the actual condition of his own heart ; and
other men, so strangely are we all knit together by the tie of
sympathy, must and will give heed to him. In culture, in extent of
view, we may stand above the speaker, or below him ; but in either
case, his words, if they are earnest and sincere, will find some
response within us ; for in spite of all casual varieties in outward
rank, or inward, as face answers to face, so does the heart of man to
man.
This may appear a very simple principle, and
one which Burns had little merit in discovering. True, the discovery
is easy enough : but the practical appliance is not easy ; is indeed
the fundamental difficulty which all poets have to strive with, and
which scarcely one in the hundred ever fairly surmounts. A head too
dull to discriminate the true from the false ; a heart too dull to
love the one at all risks, and to hate the other in spite of all
temptations, are alike fatal to a writer. With either, or as more
commonly happens, with both of these deficiencies combine a love of
distinction, a wish to be original, which is seldom wanting, and we
have Affectation, the bane of literature, as Cant, its elder brother,
is of morals. How often does the one and the other front us, in
poetry, as in life ! Great poets themselves are not always free of
this vice ; nay, it is precisely on a certain sort and degree of
greatness that it is most commonly ingrafted. A strong effort after
excellence will sometimes solace itself with a mere shadow of success
; he who has much to unfold will sometimes unfold it imperfectly.
Byron, for instance, was no common man : yet if we examine his poetry
with this view, we shall find it far enough from faultless. Generally
speaking, we should say that it is not true. He refreshes us, not with
the divine fountain, but too often with vulgar strong waters,
stimulating indeed to the taste, but soon ending in dislike, or even
nausea. Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask, real men ; we mean,
poetically consistent and conceivable men ? Do not these characters,
does not the character of their author, which more or less shines
through them all, rather appear a thing put on for the occasion ; no
natural or possible mode of being, but something intended to look much
grander than nature ? Surely, all these stormful agonies, this
volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt, and moody desperation, with so
much scowling, and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humour, is
more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is to
last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the business of life,
which is to last threescore and ten years. To our minds there is a
taint of this sort, something which we should call theatrical, false,
affected, in every one of these otherwise so powerful pieces. Perhaps
Don Juan, especially the latter parts of it, is the only thing
approaching to a sincere work, he ever wrote ; the only work where he
showed himself, in any measure, as he was ; and seemed so intent on
his subject as, for moments, to forget himself. Yet Byron hated this
vice ; we believe heartily detested it: nay, he had declared formal
war against it in words. So difficult is it even for the strongest to
make this primary attainment, which might seem the simplest of all :
to read its own consciousness without mistakes, without errors
involuntarily or wilful ! We recollect no poet of Burns's
susceptibility who comes before us from the first, and abides with us
to the last, with such a total want of affectation. He is an honest
man, and an honest writer. In his successes and his failures, in his
greatness and his littleness, he is ever clear, simple, true, and
glitters with no lustre but his own. We reckon this to be a great
virtue ; to be, in fact, the root of most other virtues, literary as
well as moral. Here, however, let us say, it is to the Poetry of Burns
that we now allude ; to those writings which he had time to meditate,
and where no special reason existed to warp his critical feeling, or
obstruct his endeavour to fulfil it. Certain of his Letters, and other
fractions of prose composition, by no means deserve this praise. Here,
doubtless, there is not the same natural truth of style ; but on the
contrary, something not only stiff, but strained and twisted ; a
certain high-flown inflated tone ; the stilting emphasis of which
contrasts ill with the firmness and rugged simplicity of even his
poorest verses. Thus no man, it would appear, is altogether
unaffected. Does not Shakespeare himself sometimes premeditate the
sheerest bombast ! But even with regard to these Letters of Burns, it
is but fair to state that he had two excuses. The first was his
comparative deficiency in language. Burns, though for most part he
writes with singular force and even gracefulness, is not master of
English prose, as he is of Scottish verse ; not master of it, we mean,
in proportion to the depth and vehemence of his matter. These Letters
strike us as the effort of a man to express something which he has no
organ fit for expressing. But a second and weightier excuse is to be
found in the peculiarity of Burns's social rank. His correspondents
are often men whose relation to him he has never accurately
ascertained ; whom therefore he is either forearming himself against,
or else unconsciously flattering, by adopting the style he thinks will
please them. At all events, we should remember that these faults, even
in his Letters, are not the rule, but the exception. Whenever he
writes, as one would ever wish to do, to trusted friends and on real
interests, his style becomes simple, vigorous, expressive, sometimes
even beautiful. His letters to Mrs. Dunlop are uniformly excellent.
