ELEGY ON CAPT. MATTHEW HENDERSON,

A Gentleman Who Held the Patent for His Honours Immediately From Almighty God

SCOTCH DRINK

TO A HAGGIS

A BARD'S EPITAPH

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

Certain fundamental qualities are easily traced to his parentage. The Burnses were honest, hard-working people, stubborn fighters for independence, with intellectual tastes above the average of their class. These characteristics the poet inherited. With all his failures in worldly affairs, he contrived to pay his debts; however obliged to friends and patrons for occasional aid, he never abated his self-respect or became the hanger-on of any man; and he showed throughout his life an eager, receptive, and ever-expanding mind. The seed sown by his father with so much pains and care in his early training fell on fruitful soil, and in the range of his information, as well as in his critical and reasoning powers, Burns became the equal of educated men. The love of independence, indeed, was less a family than a national passion. The salient fact in the history of Scotland is the intensity of the prolonged struggle against the political domination of England; and there developed in the individual life of the Scot a corresponding tendency to value personal freedom as the greatest of treasures. The thrift and economy for which the Scottish people are everywhere notable, and which has its vicious excess in parsimony and nearness, is in its more honorable aspects no end in itself but merely a means to independence. If they are keen to “gather gear,”

Along with these substantial and admirable qualities of integrity and independence Burns inherited certain limitations. In the peasant class in which he was born and reared, the fierceness of the struggle for existence has crowded out some of the more beautiful qualities that need ease and leisure for their development. The virtues of chivalry do indeed at times appear among the very poor, but they are the characteristic product of a class in which conditions are more generous, the necessaries of life are taken for granted, and the elemental demands of human nature are satisfied without competitive striving. When a peasant is chivalrous he is so by virtue of some individual quality, and in spite of rather than because of the spirit of his class. Burns was too acute and too observant not to gather much from the social ideals of the ladies and gentlemen with whom he came in contact, and what he gathered affected his conduct profoundly; but at times under stress of frustrated passion or mortified vanity he reverted to the ruder manners of the peasantry from which he sprang. So have to be accounted for certain brutalities in his treatment of the women who loved him or who had been unwise enough to yield to his fascination.

Other characteristics belong to him individually rather than to his family or class or nation. He was to an extraordinary degree proud and sensitive. He reacted warmly to kindness, and showed his gratitude without stint; but he allowed no man to presume upon the obligations he had conferred. He was very conscious of difference of rank, and never sought to ignore it, however little he thought it mattered in comparison with intrinsic merit. But the very degree to which he was aware of the social gap between him and many of his acquaintances put him ever on the alert for slights; and when he perceived or imagined that he had received them, his indignation was sometimes less than dignified and often excessive. Though he knew that he possessed uncommon gifts, he was essentially modest in fact as well as in appearance, and on the whole underestimated his genius.

He was fond of women, and this passion more than any other has been the center of the disputes that have raged round his life and character. Again, contemporary and class customs have to be taken into account. In spite of the formal disapproval of public opinion and the censure of the church, the attitude of his class in the end of the eighteenth century toward such irregularities as brought Burns and Jean Armour to the stool of repentance was much less severe than it would be in this country to-day. Burns himself knew he was culpable, but the comparative laxity of the standards of the time made it easier for him to forgive himself, and prompted him to defiance when he believed himself criticized by puritan hypocrites. Thus in his utterances we have a curious inconsistency, his feeling ranging from black remorse and melancholy, through half-hearted excuse and justification, to swaggering bravado. And none of them makes pleasant reading.

In estimating him as a poet, nothing is lost in keeping in mind the historical relations which have been so strongly emphasized in recent years. He himself would have been the last to resent being placed in a national tradition, but, on the contrary, would have been proud to be regarded as the last and greatest of Scottish vernacular poets. Patriotic feeling is frequent in his verse; we have seen how consciously he performed his work for Johnson and Thomson as a service to his country; and to the “Guidwife of Wauchope House” he professed, speaking of his youth,

His relation to his English predecessors need not again be detailed, so little of value did they contribute to the vital part of his work. But some account should be taken of his connection with the English literature of his own and the next generation.

The humanitarian movement was well under way before the appearance of Burns, and the particular manifestations of it in, for example, the poems of Cowper on animals, owed nothing to the influence of Burns. But Cowper's hares never appealed to the popular heart with the force of Burns's sheep and mice and dogs, and the tender familiarity and wistful jocoseness of his poems to beasts have never been surpassed. In writing these he was probably, consciously or unconsciously, affected by the tendency of the time, as he was also in the democratic brotherhood of A Man's a Man for a' That, but, in both cases, as we have seen, part of the impulse, that part that made his utterance reach his audience, was derived from his personal intercourse with his farm stock and from his inborn conviction of the dignity of the individual. His relations to these elements in the thought and feeling of his day were, then, reciprocal: they strengthened certain traits in his personality, and he passed them on to posterity, strengthened in turn by his moving expression.

The situation is similar with regard to his connection with the so-called “return to nature” in English poetry. Historians have discerned a new era begun in descriptive poetry with Thomson's Seasons; and in Cowper again, to ignore many intermediates, there is abundance of faithful portraiture of landscape. But Burns was not given to set description of their kind, and what he has in common with them lies in the nature of his detail—the frank actuality of the images of wind and weather, burn and brae, which form the background of his human comedy and tragedy. He observed for himself, and he called things by their own names. In so doing he was once more following a national tradition, so that he was not “returning” to nature, since the tradition had never left it; but, on the other hand, it is reasonable to suppose that Wordsworth, arriving at a somewhat similar method by a totally different route, found corroboration for his theories of the simplification needed in the matter and diction of poetry in the success of the Scottish rustic who showed his youth

Wordsworth, of course, like the most distinguished of his romantic contemporaries, found much in nature that Burns never dreamed of; and even the faithfulness in detail which Burns shared with these poets reached a point of subtlety and sensuousness far beyond the reach of his simple and direct epithets. Nature was to be given in the next generation a vast and novel variety of spiritual significance. With all that Burns had nothing to do. He was realist, not romanticist, though his example operated beneficently and sanely on some of the romantic leaders.

Yet in Burns's treatment of nature there is imaginative beauty as well as humble truth. His language in description, though not mystical or highly idealized, is often rich in feeling, and his personality was potent enough to pervade his most objective writing. Thus he ranks among those who have put lovers of poetry under obligation for a fresh glimpse of the beauty and meaning of the world around them. This glimpse is so strongly suggestive of the poet that our delight in it will largely depend on our sympathy with his temperament; yet now and again he flashes out a phrase whose imaginative value is absolute, and which makes its appeal without respect to the author:

Apart from the respects in which Burns is the inheritor and perfecter of the vernacular traditions, and apart from his contact, active or passive, with the English poets of his time, there is much in his poetry which is thoroughly his own. It does not lie mainly in his thinking, robust and shrewd though that is. We perceive in his work no great individual attitude toward life and society such as we are impelled to perceive in the work of Goethe; we find no message in it like the message of Browning. What he does is to bring before us characters, situations, moods, images, that belong to the permanent and elemental in our nature. These are presented with a sympathy so living, a tenderness so poignant, a humor so arch and so sly, that they become a part of our experience in the most delightful and exhilarating fashion. Part of the function of poetry is to prevent us from becoming sluggish In our contemplation of life by making us feel it fresh, vivid, pulsing; and this Burns notably accomplishes. Coleridge's image of wetting the pebble to bring out its color and brilliance is peculiarly apt in the case of Burns; for it was the common if not the commonplace that he dealt with, and his workmanship made it sparkle like a jewel.

For the expression of all this he had an instrument that did not reach, it is true, to the great tragic tones of Shakespeare nor to the delicate and filmy subtleties of Shelley. But he could utter pathos almost intolerably piercing, and overwhelming remorse; gaiety as fresh and inspiriting as the song of a lark; roistering mirth; keen irony; and a thousand phases of passion. This he did in a verse of amazing variety—sometimes tender and caressing; sometimes rushing like a torrent.

INDEX

• A Man's a Man for a' That, quoted 158, 317.
• A Red, Red Rose, 101, quoted 102.
• Address to the Deil, 38, 86, 281, quoted 282.
• Address to the Unco Guid, 38, quoted 176, 189.
• Adventures of Telemachus, 17.
• Ae Fond Kiss, quoted 56-57, 75, 103.
• Æneid (Douglas's), 268.
• Afton Water, quoted 116.
• Ainslie, Robert, 50.
• Alloway, 4 ff.
• Animals, Burns's feeling for, 270, 271.
• Armour, James, 35, 37-39.
• Armour, Jean, 35-39, 50, 55, 93, 110, 122, 172.
• Arnold, Matthew, 206, 237.
• Auld Lang Syne, 98, quoted 100.
• Auld Lichts, 179, 180, 184, 188.
• Auld Rob Morris, 115, quoted 121.

• Bachelor's Club, 22.
• Bannocks o' Barley, quoted 165.
• Bard's Epitaph, A, 294, quoted 308.
• Beattie, 86.
• Beethoven, 95.
• Begbie, Ellison, 22-23, 27, 110.
• Bessy and Her Spinnin'-Wheel, quoted 145.
• Biography, Official, 68.
• Blacklock, Doctor, 39.
• Blair, Doctor, 45, 86.
• Blair Athole, 51.
• Boar's Head Tavern, 240.
• Bonnie Lesley, 115, quoted 118.
• Braw Braw Lads, quoted 140.
• Brow-on-Solway, 67.
• Browning, 320.
• Burnes, William, 3-8.
• Burns, Agnes (Brown), 4, 8.
• Burns, Gilbert, 5-6, 15, 31, 59, 90.

• Burns, Robert, his career: autobiographical letter, 1-2; parentage and early life, 3-23; schooling, 5-8, 15, 17; reading, 6-8, 18-19; study of French, 16; folk-lore, 18; overwork, 19; first song, 20; flax-dressing, 23; early love-affairs, 22, 27; Mossgiel, 31-44; Elizabeth Paton, 32-35; Jean Armour, 35-36; Mary Campbell (Highland Mary), 36-37; West Indian project, 37-39; Elizabeth Miller, 37; Kilmarnock edition, 37-38; disciplined by the church, 38-39; Edinburgh, 44-56; early reviews, 46; Edinburgh edition, 46-50; southern tour, 50; Highland tours, 50-51; Mrs. McLehose, 52-58; marriage, 55; Ellisland, 53-62; Excise, 61-65; Dumfries, 62-68; politics, 63-65; work for Johnson and Thomson, 65-66, 91-98; whisky, 66-67, 313; illness and death, 66-67.

• Burns and music, 9 ff.
• Burns's method of composition, 87, 92, 111-112.
• Burns's stanza, 80.

• Ca' the Yowes, quoted 115.
• Campbell, Mary, 36-37, 76, 112. See Highland Mary.
• Canterbury Tales, 254.
• Chalmers, Margaret, 110.
• Charlie He's My Darling, quoted 168.
• Chaucer, 254.
• Chloris (Jean Lorimer), 110, 112.
• Choice Collection (Watson's), 81.
• Clarinda (Mrs. McLehose), 52-58.
• Clarinda, quoted 58, 75, 109.
• Cockburn, Mrs., 82.
• Coleridge, 321.
• Come Boat Me O'er to Charlie, quoted 163.
• Comin' through the Rye, quoted 154.
• Complete Letter-Writer, 6.
• Contented wi' Little, quoted 126.
• Conviviality, 66, 313.
• Corn Rigs, 75.
• Cowper, 267, 317.
• Crabbe, 267.
• Craigieburn-wood, 111.
• Creech, 45, 50, 52.
• Currie, Doctor, 68.

• Dalrymple, James, 44.
• Dalrymple School, 15.
• Davidson, Betty, 18.
• Death and Doctor Hornbook, quoted 287.
• Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie, 80, 82.
• Dedication to Gavin Hamilton, 185-186.
• Descriptive poetry, 206 ff., 264 ff.
• Dick, J.C., 91-92, note.
• Dodsley, Robert, 103.
• Douglas, Gavin, 268.
• Dramatic lyrics, 128 ff.
• Drummond of Hawthornden, 72.
• Dumfries, 50, 62-68.
• Dunbar, William, 81, 241, 316.
• Duncan Davison, quoted 153.
• Duncan Gray, quoted 152.
• Dunlop, Mrs. 110.

• Edinburgh, Burns in, 44-56.
• Edinburgh Magazine, 46.
• Elegies, 294 ff.
• Elegy on Capt. Matthew Henderson, quoted 298.
• Ellisland, 58-62.
• English poems of Burns, 73 ff.
• Epigrams, 204, 205.
• Epistle to a Young Friend, 199, quoted 200.
• Epistle to Davie, 79, quoted 193, 267.
• Epistle to James Smith, 190, 191.
• Epistle to John Goldie, 179.
• Epistle to John Rankine, 33.
• Epistle to McMath, 181.
• Epistle to William Simpson, 270.
• Epistles, 38, 190 ff.
• Epitaphs, 204, 205.
• Erskine, Hon. Henry, 45.
• Excise service, 59, 61-65.

• Farmer's Ingle, 84.
• Ferguson, Dr. Adam, 46.
• Fergusson, Robert, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 316.
• Fisher, William, 173.
• Flax-dressing experiment, 23.
• Flint, Christina, 93.
• For the Sake o' Somebody, quoted 136.
• Freemasons, 46.
• French Revolution, 63-64.
• From thee, Eliza, I must go, 37.

• Gaelic, 69.
• Gibson, Nancy, 239.
• Glencairn, Lord, 45, 49.
• Glenriddel Manuscript, 60.
• Go Fetch to me a Pint o' Wine, quoted 88.
• Goethe, 320.
• Goldsmith, 86.
• Gordon, Duchess of, 45, 48.
• Graham of Fintry, 64.
• Gray, 86.
• Green Grow the Rashes, quoted 123.
• Grose, Captain, 253.

• Had I the Wyte?, quoted 148.
• Halloween, 38, 208, quoted 209, 217, 218, 223, 270, 282.
• Hamilton, Gavin, 38, 172, 185.
• Hamilton of Gilbertfield, 81, 82.
• Handsome Nell: quoted 20; criticized by Burns, 21-22, 103.
• Happy Beggars, 238.
• Haydn, 95.
• Henderson, Captain Matthew, 294.
• Henryson, Robert, 78, 81, 272, 316.
• Heroic couplet in Burns, 268, 269.
• Highland Mary, quoted 113-116.
• Highland Mary, 36-37, 76, 110.
• History of the Bible, 6.
• Hogg, James, 162.
• Holy Willie's Prayer, 38, quoted 173.
• How Lang and Dreary, quoted 138.
• Humble Petition of Bruar Water, 51.
• Hume, David, 44.

• I Gaed a Waefu' Gate, quoted 117.
• I Hae a Wife, quoted 59, 103.
• I Hae Been at Crookieden, quoted 167.
• I'm Owre Young to Marry Yet, quoted 143.
• Independence, Scottish love of, 311.
• Irvine, 23.
• It Was a' for our Rightfu' King, quoted 162.

• Jacobite Songs, 161 ff.
• Jacobitism, 63.
• John Anderson, my Jo, 145, quoted 146.
• Johnson, James, 65, 91, 94, 97, 98, 316.

• Kenmure's On and Awa, quoted 165.
• Kilmarnock Edition. 37-39.
• Kilpatrick, Nelly, 20, 22, 110.
• Kirk of Scotland, Opposition to, 171.
• Kirkoswald, 17, 254.
• Kirkyard Eclogues, 84.
• Knox, John, 71.
• Kozeluch, 95.

• La Fontaine, 272.
• Laddie Lie Near Me, 92.
• Lament for the Earl of Glencairn, 49.
• Language of Burns, 69 ff.
• Lassie wi' the Lint-white Locks, quoted 119.
• Last Dying Words of Bonny Heck, 82.
• Last May a Braw Wooer, quoted 135.
• Last Speech of a Wretched Miser, 83.
• Leith Races, 84.
• Lewars, Jessie, 110, 122.
• Lindesay, Sir David, 71.
• Lindsay, Lady Anne, 82.
• Lochlea, 5 ff.
• London Monthly Review, 46.
• Lorimer, Jean (Chloris), 110, 111.
• Lounger, The, 46.
• Lowland Scots, 69 ff.
• Lucky Spence's Last Advice, 82.

• Mackenzie, Henry, 19, 45, 46, 86.
• Macpherson's Farewell, quoted 150.
• McGill, Doctor, 186.
• McLehose, Mrs., 52-58.
• Mary Morison, quoted 28.
• Mauchline, 31, 50.
• Merry Beggars, 238.
• Miller, Elizabeth, 37.
• Milton, 85.
• Montgomerie's Peggy, quoted 120.
• Montgomery, Alexander, 79, 316.
• Moore, Dr. John: 5; letter to, 1-2, 18, 83.
• Mossgiel, 31-44.
• Mount Oliphant, 4-5.
• Murdoch, John, 5, 15-17, 90-91.
• Murray, Sir William, 51.
• Muse, jocular treatment of his, 203 ff.
• Music, Burns's knowledge of, 90 ff.
• Music and song, 169-170, 322.
• My Father was a Farmer, quoted 126.
• My Heart's in the Highlands, quoted 140.
• My Love She's but a Lassie Yet, 141, quoted 144.
• My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose, 101, quoted 102.
• My Nannie's Awa, quoted 57-58, 75, 103, 266.
• My Nannie O, quoted 29-30, 103.
• My Wife's a Winsome Wee Thing, quoted 108.

• Nairne, Lady, 162.
• Nature in Burns, 318.
• New Lichts, 179, 188.
• Nicol, William, 50, 52.

• O, For Ane an' Twenty, Tam!, quoted 129.
• O Merry Hae I Been, quoted 148.
• O This is No my Ain Lassie, quoted 107.
• O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast, 122, quoted 123.
• Of a' the Airts, quoted 106.
• On a Scotch Bard, Gone to the West Indies, quoted, 42-44.
• On Seeing a Wounded Hare, 86.
• Open the Door to me, O! quoted 137.

• Park, Anne, 110.
• Paton, Elizabeth, 32.
• Peasant characteristics of Burns, 311, 312.
• Percy, Bishop, 81.
• Planestanes and Causey, 84.
• Pleyel, 95.
• Politics, 63-65.
• Poor Mailie's Elegy, quoted 26-27.
• Poortith Cauld, 106, quoted 107.
• Poosie Nansie, 239.
• Pope, 86, 269.
• Practical Essay on the Death of Jesus Christ, 186.
• Prayer in the Prospect of Death, quoted 32.

• Ramsay, Allan, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 99, 103, 238, 316.
• Ramsay of Ochtertyre, 51.
• Realism, 267.
• Reformation, influence of, 95 ff.
• Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 81.
• Richmond, 44.
• Riddel, Col. Robert, 60.

• Satires and Epistles, 171 ff.
• Scenery in Burns, 265 ff.
• Scotch Drink, 38, 84, 294, quoted 301.
• Scots Musical Museum, 65, 95, 97.
• Scots, Wha Hae, quoted 160.
• Scott, Alexander, 79.
• Scott, Sir Walter, 44, 46-48, 161-162.
• Scottish Dialect, 69 ff.
• Scottish Folk-song, 96 ff.
• Scottish Literature, 78 ff.
• Scottish Song, 90 ff.
• Sea in Scottish poetry, 264-265.
• Seasons, 318.
• Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, 95.
• Sempills, 79, 80, 294, 316.
• Shaftesbury, 193.
• Shakespeare, 85, 321.
• Shelley, 322.
• Shenstone, 86.
• Sibbald, James, 46.
• Simmer's a Pleasant Time, quoted 131.
• Smith, Adam, 44.
• Sterne, 86, 270.
• Stewart, Dugald, 45.
• Stirling, Alexander, Earl of, 72.
• Stuart-Menteath, Sir James, 93.

• Tam Glen, quoted 133.
• Tam o' Shanter, 253-257, quoted 257, 266, 268, 282.
• Tam Samson's Elegy, quoted 294.
• Tea Table Miscellany, 81, 99.
• The Auld Farmer's New-Year Morning Salutation, quoted 278.
• The Banks of Helicon, 79.
• The Blue-eyed Lassie, quoted 117.
• The Bonnie Lad that's Far Awa, quoted 139.
• The Brigs of Ayr, 267.
• The Cherry and the Slae, 79.
• The Cotter's Saturday Night, quoted 8-15, 38, 74, 84, 190, criticized 207 ff., 219, 266.
• The Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie, quoted 23-25.
• The Deil's Awa wi' th' Exciseman, quoted 154.
• The Deuk's Dang o'er my Daddie, quoted 155.
• The Gazetteer, 64.
• The Gentle Shepherd, 82.
• The Gloomy Night, quoted 40-41, 103.
• The Highland Balou, 150, quoted 151.
• The Highland Laddie, quoted 164.
• The Holy Fair, 38, 84, 227, quoted 228.
• The Jolly Beggars, 38, 77, 238-241, quoted 241, 266.
• The Kirk's Alarm, 186, 187.
• The Lass of Cessnock Banks, 23.
• The Lea-Rig, quoted 120.
• The Man of Feeling, 86.
• The Ordination, 184, 185.
• The Piper of Kilbarchan, 79.
• The Poet's Welcome to his Love-begotten Daughter, quoted 33-35.
• The Rantin' Dog the Daddie o't, quoted 134.
• The Rigs o' Barley, quoted 30, 103.
• The Twa Dogs, 4, 38, 84, quoted 219.
• The Twa Herds, 180.
• The Vision, 38.
• The Weary Pund o' Tow, quoted 147.
• There'll Never be Peace, quoted 166.
• There was a Lad, quoted 125.
• Thomson, George, 65, 88, 91, 92, 95, 98, 169, 316.
• Thomson, James, 86, 318.
• To a Haggis, 294, quoted 306.
• To a Louse, 38, quoted 274.
• To a Mountain Daisy, 38, 86, 190, quoted 276.
• To a Mouse, 38, 86, 190, quoted 272.
• To Daunton Me, quoted 142.
• To Mary in Heaven, 76, quoted 114.
• To the Deil, 38, 86, 281, quoted 282.
• To the Guidwife of Wauchope House, 316.
• To the Rev. John McMath, quoted 181.
• To the Unco Guid, 38, quoted 176, 189.

• Wallace, History of Sir William, 19.
• Wandering Willie, quoted 138.
• Watson, James, 81.
• West Indies, 37-39.
• Wha is that at my Bower Door?, quoted 156.
• What Can a Young Lassie, quoted 142.
• Whistle and I'll Come to Thee, my Lad, 75, quoted 132.
• Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary, 37, quoted 40, 103.
• Willie Brew'd a Peck o' Maut, 237, quoted 238.
• Willie's Wife, quoted 156.
• Wilson, John (Dr. Hornbook), 287.
• Winter, a Dirge, 266.
• Winter Night, A, 271.
• Women, Burns and, 314, 315.
• Wordsworth, 318, 319.

• Ye Banks and Braes, quoted 130, 131.
• Yestreen I had a Pint o' Wine, quoted 104-105, 110.
• Young, Dr., 86.