THOMAS CARLYLE'S
ESSAY ON BURNS (1828)
Part 3
But we return to his Poetry. In addition to
its Sincerity, it has another peculiar merit, which indeed is but a
mode, or perhaps a means, of the foregoing : this displays itself in
his choice of subjects ; or rather in his indifference as to subjects
; and the power he has of making all subjects interesting. The
ordinary poet, like the ordinary man, is for ever seeking in external
circumstances the help which can be found only in himself. In what is
familiar and near at hand he discerns no form or comeliness : home is
not poetical, but prosaic ; it is in some past, distant, conventional,
heroic world, that poetry resides ; were he there and not here, were
he thus and not so, it would be well with him. Hence our innumerable
host of rose-coloured Novels and iron-mailed Epics, with their
locality not on the Earth, but somewhere nearer to the Moon. Hence our
Virgins of the Sun, and our Knights of the Cross, malicious Saracens
in turbans, and copper-coloured Chiefs in wampum, and so many other
truculent figures from the heroic times or the heroic climates, who on
all hands swarm in our poetry. Peace be with them ! But yet, as a
great moralist proposed preaching to the men of this century, so would
we fain preach to the poets, "a sermon on the duty of staying at
home." Let them be sure that heroic ages and heroic climates can do
little for them. That form of life has attraction for us, less because
it is better or nobler than our own, than simply because it is
different; and even this attraction must be of the most transient
sort. For will not our own age, one day, be an ancient one ; and have
as quaint a costume as the rest; not contrasted with the rest
therefore, but ranked along with them, in respect of quaintness ! Does
Homer interest us now, because he wrote of what passed beyond his
native Greece, and two centuries before he was born ; or because he
wrote of what passed in God's world, and in the heart of man, which is
the same after thirty centuries ? Let our poets look to this : is
their feeling really finer, truer, and their vision deeper than that
of other men,—they have nothing to fear, even from the humblest
subjects ; is it not so,—they have nothing to hope, but an ephemeral
favour, even from the highest.
The poet, we imagine, can never have far to
seek for a subject: the elements of his art are in him, and around him
on every hand ; for him the Ideal world is not remote from the Actual,
but under it and within it : nay, he is a poet, precisely because he
can discern it there. Wherever there is a sky above him, and a world_
around him,' the poet is in his place ; for here too is man's
existence, with its infinite longings and small acquirings ; its
ever-thwarted, ever-renewed endeavours; its unspeakable aspirations,
its fears and hopes that wander through Eternity ; and all the mystery
of brightness and of gloom that it was ever made of, in any age or
climate, since man first began to live. Is there not the fifth act of
a Tragedy in every death-bed, though it were a peasant's, and a bed of
heath ? And are wooings and weddings obsolete, that there can be
Comedy no longer ? Or are men suddenly grown wise, that Laughter must
no longer shake his sides, but be cheated of his Farce ? Man's life
and nature is, as it was, and as it will ever be. But the poet must
have an eye to read these things, and a heart to understand them : or
they come and pass away before him in vain. He is a vates, a seer ; a
gift of vision has been given him. Has life no meanings for him, which
another cannot equally decipher ; then he is no poet, and Delphi
itself will not make him one.
In this respect, Burns, though not perhaps
absolutely a great poet, better manifests his capability, better
proves the truth of his genius, than if he had by his own strength
kept the whole Minerva Press going, to the end of his literary course.
He shows himself at least a poet of Nature's own making ; and Nature,
after all, is still the grand agent in making poets. We often hear of
this and the other external condition being requisite for the
existence of a poet. Sometimes it is a certain sort of training ; he
must have studied certain things, studied, for instance, " the elder
dramatists," and so learned a poetic language ; as if poetry lay in
the tongue, not in the heart. At other times we are told he must be
bred in a certain rank, and must be on a confidential footing with the
higher classes ; because, above all things, he must see the world. As
to seeing the world, we apprehend this will cause him little
difficulty, if he have but eyesight to see it with. Without eyesight,
indeed, the task might be hard. The blind or the purblind man "
travels from Dan to Beersheba, and finds it all barren." But happily
every poet is born in the world ; and sees it, with or against his
will, every day and every hour he lives. The mysterious workmanship of
man's heart, the true light and the inscrutable darkness of man's
destiny, reveal themselves not only in capital cities and crowded
saloons, but in every hut and hamlet where men have their abode. Nay,
do not the elements of all human virtues and all human vices ; the
passions at once of a Borgia and of a Luther, lie written in stronger
or fainter lines, in the consciousness of every individual bosom, that
has practised honest self-examination ? Truly, this same world may be
seen in Mossgiel and Tarbolton, if we look well, as clearly as it ever
came to light in Crockford's, or the Tuileries itself.
But sometimes still harder requisitions are
laid on the poor aspirant to poetry ; for it is hinted that he should
have been born two centuries ago ; inasmuch as poetry, about that
date, vanished from the earth, and became no longer attainable by men
! Such cobweb speculations have, now and then, overhung the field of
literature ; but they obstruct not the growth of any plant there : the
Shakspeare or the Burns, unconsciously and merely as he walks onward,
silently brushes them away. Is not every genius an impossibility till
he appear ? Why do we call him new and original, if we saw where his
marble was lying, and what fabric he could rear from it ? It is not
the material, but the workman that is wanting. It is not the dark
place that hinders, but the dim eye. A Scottish peasant's life was the
meanest and rudest of all lives, till Burns became a poet in it, and a
poet of it ; found it a man's life, and therefore significant to men.
A thousand battle-fields remain unsung ; but The Wounded Hare has not
perished without its memorial ; a balm of mercy yet breathes on us
from its dumb agonies, because a poet was there. Our Hallowe'en had
passed and repassed, in rude awe and laughter, since the era of the
Druids ; but no Theocritus, till Burns, discerned in it the materials
of a Scottish Idyl : neither was The Holy Fair any Council of Trent or
Roman Jubilee ; but nevertheless, Superstition and Hypocrisy and
Fun
having been propitious to him, in this man's hand it became a poem,
instinct with satire and genuine comic life. Let but the true poet be
given us, we repeat it, place him where and how you will, and true
poetry will not be wanting.
Independently of the essential gift of poetic
feeling, as we have now attempted to describe it, a certain rugged
sterling worth pervades whatever Burns has written ; a virtue, as of
green fields and mountain breezes, dwells in his poetry ; it is
redolent of natural life and hardy natural men. There is a decisive
strength in him, and yet a sweet native gracefulness : he is tender,
he is vehement, yet without constraint or too visible effort ; he
melts the heart, or inflames it, with a power which seems habitual and
familiar to him. We see that in this man there was the gentleness, the
trembling pity of a woman, with the deep earnestness, the force and
passionate ardour of a hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming fire ; as
lightning lurks in the drops of the summer cloud. He has a resonance
in his bosom for every note of human feeling ; the high and the low,
the sad, the ludicrous, the joyful, are welcome in their turns to his
" lightly moved and all-conceiving spirit." And observe with what a
fierce, prompt force he grasps his subject, be it what it may ! How he
fixes, as it were, the full image of the matter in his eye ; full and
clear in every lineament ; and catches the real type and essence of
it, amid a thousand accidents and superficial circumstances, no one of
which misleads him ! Is it of reason ; some truth to be discovered ?
No sophistry, no vain surface-logic detains him ; quick, resolute,
unerring, he pierces through into the marrow of the question ; and
speaks his verdict with an emphasis that cannot be forgotten. Is it of
description ; some visual object to be represented ? No poet of any
age or nation is more graphic than Burns : the characteristic features
disclose themselves to him at a glance ; three lines from his hand,
and we have a likeness. And, in that rough dialect, in that rude,
often awkward metre, so clear and definite a likeness ! It seems a
draughtsman working with a burnt stick; and yet the burin of a Retzsch
is not more expressive or exact.
Of this last excellence, the plainest and
most comprehensive of all, being indeed the root and foundation of
every sort of talent, poetical or intellectual, we could produce
innumerable instances from the writings of Burns. Take these glimpses
of a snow-storm from his Winter Night (the italics are ours):
"When biting Boreas, fell and doure,
Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r,
And Phcebus gies a
short-liv'd glowr
Far south the lift.
Dint-dark' ning thro' the flaky show'r
Or whirling drift:
'Ae night the storm the steeples rock'd,
Poor labour sweet in sleep was lock'd,
While burns wi
snawy vireeths upchock'd
Wild-eddying whirl,
Or thro' the mining outlet lock'd
Down headlong hurl."
Are there not " descriptive touches " here ?
The describer saw this thing; the essential feature and true likeness
of every circumstance in it ; saw, and not with the eye only. " Poor
labour locked in sweet sleep ;" the dead stillness of man,
unconscious, vanquished, yet not unprotected, while such strife of the
material elements rages, and seems to reign supreme in loneliness :
this is of the heart as well as of the eye !—Look also at his image of
a thaw, and prophesied fall of the Auld Brig:
"When heavy, dark, continued, a'-day rains
Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains;
When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil,
Or stately Lugar's
mossy fountains boil,
Or where the Greenock winds his
moorland course,
Or haunted Garpal * draws his feeble source,
Arous'd by blust'ring winds and
spotting thowes.
In mony a torrent dawn his snaw-broo rowes;
While crashing ice, borne on the roaring speat.
Sweeps dams and mills and brigs a' to the gate :
And from Glenbuck down to the Rottonkey,
Auld Ayr is just one lengthen'd
tumbling sea;
Then down ye'll hurl, Deil nor ye never rise !
And
dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies."
*
Fabulous Hydaspes!
The last line is in itself a Poussin-picture of that Deluge ! The
welkin has, as it were, bent down with its weight; the " gumlie jaups
" and the " pouring skies " are mingled together ; it is a world of
rain and ruin. In respect of mere clearness and minute fidelity, the
Farmer's commendation of his Auld Mare, in plough or in cart, may vie
with Homer's Smithy of the Cyclops, or yoking of Priam's Chariot. Nor
have we forgotten stout Burn-the-wind and his brawny customers,
inspired by Scotch Drink : but it is needless to multiply examples.
One other trait of a much finer sort we select from multitudes of such
among his Songs. It gives, in a single line, to the saddest feeling
the saddest environment and local habitation :—
" The pale Moon is setting beyond the white wave,
And Time is setting wi' me O;
Farewell, false friends ! false lover, farewell!
I'll nae mair trouble them nor thee O."
This clearness of sight we have called the foundation of all talent ;
for, in fact, unless we see our object, how shall we know how to place
or prize it, in our understanding, our imagination, our affections ?
Yet it is not in itself, perhaps, a very high excellence ; but capable
of being united indifferently with the strongest, or with ordinary
powers. Homer surpasses all men in this quality : but, strangely
enough, at no great distance below him are Richardson and Defoe. It
belongs, in truth, to what is called a lively mind ; and gives no sure
indication of the higher endowments that may exist along with it. In
all the three cases we have mentioned, it is combined with great
garrulity ; their descriptions are detailed, ample and lovingly exact;
Homer's fire bursts through, from time to time, as if by accident; but
Defoe and Richardson have no fire. Burns, again, is not more
distinguished by the clearness than by the impetuous force of his
conceptions. Of the strength, the piercing emphasis with which he
thought, his emphasis of expression may give a humble but the readiest
proof. Who
ever uttered sharper sayings than his ; words more memorable, now by
their burning vehemence, now by their cool vigour and laconic pith ? A
single phrase depicts a whole subject, a whole scene. We hear of "a
gentleman that derived his patent of nobility direct from Almighty
God." Our Scottish forefathers in the battle-field struggled forward "
red-wat-shod :" in this one word, a full vision of horror and
carnage, perhaps too frightfully accurate for Art !
In
fact, one of the leading features in the mind of Burns is this vigour
of his strictly intellectual perceptions. A resolute force is ever
visible in his judgments, as in his feelings and volitions. Professor
Stewart says of him, with some surprise : " All the faculties of
Burns's mind were, as far as I could judge, equally vigorous ; and his
predilection for poetry was rather the result of his own enthusiastic
and impassioned temper, than of a genius exclusively adapted to that
species of composition. From his conversation I should have pronounced
him to be fitted to excel in whatever walk of ambition he had chosen
to exert his abilities." But this, if we mistake not, is at all times
the very essence of a truly poetical endowment. Poetry, except in such
cases as that of Keats, where the whole consists in a weak-eyed
maudlin sensibility, and a certain vague random tunefulness of nature,
is no separate faculty, no organ which can be superadded to the rest,
or disjoined from them ; but rather the 1 result of their general
harmony and completion. The feelings, the gifts that exist in the Poet
are those that exist, with more or less development, in every human
soul : the imagination, which shudders at the Hell of Dante, is the
same faculty, weaker in degree, which called that picture into being.
How does the Poet speak to men, with power, but by being still more a
man than they ? Shakspeare, it has been well observed, in the planning
and completing of his tragedies, has shown an Understanding, were it
nothing more, which might have governed states, or indited a Novum
Organum. What Burns's force of understanding may have been, we have
less means of judging : it had to dwell among the humblest objects ;
never saw Philosophy ; never rose, except by natural effort and for
short intervals, into the region of great ideas. Nevertheless,
sufficient indication, if no proof sufficient, remains for us in his
works : we discern the brawny movements of a gigantic though untutored
strength ; and can understand how, in conversation, his quick, sure
insight into men and things may, as much as aught else about him, have
amazed the best thinkers of his time and country.
But, unless we mistake, the intellectual gift of Burns is fine as well
as strong. The more delicate relations of things could not well have
escaped his eye, for they were intimately present to his heart. The
logic of the senate and the forum is indispensable, but not
all-sufficient ; nay, perhaps the highest Truth is that which will the
most certainly elude it. For this logic works by words, and " the
highest," it has been said, " cannot be expressed in words." We are
not without tokens of an openness for this higher truth also, of a
keen though uncultivated sense for it, having existed in Burns. Mr.
Stewart, it will be remembered, wonders, in the passage above quoted,
that Burns had formed some distinct conception of the " doctrine of
association." We rather think that far subtler things than the
doctrine of association had from of old been familiar to him. Here,
for instance :
"We know nothing," thus writes he, " or next to nothing, of the
structure of our souls, so we cannot account for those seeming
caprices in them, that one should be particularly pleased with this
thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a different cast, makes
no extraordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring,
among which are the mountain-daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the
wild-brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I
view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud
solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing
cadence of a troop of grey plover in an autumnal morning, without
feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or
poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a
piece of machinery, which, like the Ćolian harp, passive, takes the
impression of the passing accident; or do these workings argue
something within us above the trodden clod ? I own myself partial to
such proofs of those awful and important realities : a God that made
all things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal
or woe beyond death and the grave."
