Complete Prose Works
perfect verse?) Mark the native spice and untranslatable twang in the
very names of his songs-"O for ane and twenty, Tam," "John Barleycorn,"
"Last May a braw Wooer," "Rattlin roarin Willie," "O wert thou in the
cauld, cauld blast," "Gude e'en to you, Kimmer," "Merry hae I been
teething a Heckle," "O lay thy loof in mine, lass," and others.
The longer and more elaborated poems of Burns are just such as would
please a natural but homely taste, and cute but average intellect, and
are inimitable in their way. The "Twa Dogs," (one of the best) with the
conversation between Cesar and Luath, the "Brigs of Ayr," "the Cotter's
Saturday Night," "Tam O'Shanter"--all will be long read and re-read and
admired, and ever deserve to be. With nothing profound in any of them,
what there is of moral and plot has an inimitably fresh and racy flavor.
If it came to question, Literature could well afford to send adrift many
a pretensive poem, and even book of poems, before it could spare these
compositions.
Never indeed was there truer utterance in a certain range of
idiosyncrasy than by this poet. Hardly a piece of his, large or small,
but has "snap" and raciness. He puts in cantering rhyme (often
doggerel) much cutting irony and idiomatic ear-cuffing of the
kirk-deacons--drilygood-natured addresses to his cronies, (he certainly
would not stop us if he were here this moment, from classing that
"to the De'il" among them)--"to Mailie and her Lambs," "to auld Mare
Maggie," "to a Mouse,"
"Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie:"
"to a Mountain Daisy," "to a Haggis," "to a Louse," "to the Toothache,"
&c.--and occasionally to his brother bards and lady or gentleman
patrons, often with strokes of tenderest sensibility, idiopathic humor,
and genuine poetic imagination--still oftener with shrewd, original,
sheeny, steel-flashes of wit, home-spun sense, or lance-blade
puncturing. Then, strangely, the basis of Burns's character, with all
its fun and manliness, was hypochondria, the blues, palpable enough in
"Despondency," "Man was made to Mourn," "Address to Ruin," a "Bard's
Epitaph," &c. From such deep-down elements sprout up, in very contrast
and paradox, those riant utterances of which a superficial reading will
not detect the hidden foundation. Yet nothing is clearer to me than
the black and desperate background behind those pieces--as I shall now
specify them. I find his most characteristic, Nature's masterly touch
and luxuriant life-blood, color and heat, not in "Tam O'Shanter," "the
Cotter's Saturday Night," "Scots wha hae," "Highland Mary," "the Twa
Dogs," and the like, but in "the Jolly Beggars," "Rigs of Barley,"
"Scotch Drink," "the Epistle to John Rankine," "Holy Willie's Prayer,"
and in "Halloween," (to say nothing of a certain cluster, known still to
a small inner circle in Scotland, but, for good reasons, not published
anywhere.) In these compositions, especially the first, there is much
indelicacy (some editions flatly leave it out,) but the composer reigns
alone, with handling free and broad and true, and is an artist. You may
see and feel the man indirectly in his other verses, all of them,
with more or less life-likeness--but these I have named last call out
pronouncedly in his own voice,
"I, Rob, am here."
Finally, in any summing-up of Burns, though so much is to be said in the
way of fault-finding, drawing black marks, and doubtless severe literary
criticism--(in the present outpouring I have "kept myself in," rather
than allow'd any free flow)--after full retrospect of his works and
life, the aforesaid "odd-kind chiel" remains to my heart and brain as
almost the tenderest, manliest, and (even if contradictory) dearest
flesh-and-blood figure in all the streams and clusters of by-gone poets.
Notes:
[39] Probably no man that ever lived--a friend has made the
statement--was so fondly loved, both by men and women, as Robert Burns.
The reason is not hard to find: he had a real heart of flesh and blood
beating in his bosom; you could almost hear it throb. "Some one said,
that if you had shaken hands with him his hand would have burnt yours.
The gods, indeed, made him poetical, but Nature had a hand in him first.
His heart was in the right place; he did not pile up cantos of poetic
diction; he pluck'd the mountain daisy under his feet; he wrote of
field-mouse hurrying from its ruin'd dwelling. He held the plough or the
pen with the same firm, manly grasp. And he was loved. The simple roll
of the women who gave him their affection and their sympathy would make
a long manuscript; and most of these were of such noble worth that, as
Robert Chambers says, 'their character may stand as a testimony in favor
of that of Burns.'" [As I understand, the foregoing is from an extremely
rare book publish'd by M'Kie, in Kilmarnock. I find the whole beautiful
paragraph in a capital paper on Burns, by Amelia Barr.]
[40] The Dumfries statue of Robert Burns was successfully unveil'd April
1881 by Lord Rosebery, the occasion having been made national in its
character. Before the ceremony, a large procession paraded the streets
of the town, all the trades and societies of that part of Scotland
being represented, at the head of which went dairymen and ploughmen,
the former driving their carts and being accompanied by their maids. The
statue is of Sicilian marble. It rests on a pedestal of gray stone five
feet high. The poet is represented as sitting easily on an old tree
root, holding in his left hand a cluster of daisies. His face is turn'd
toward the right shoulder, and the eyes gaze into the distance. Near by
lie a collie dog, a broad bonnet half covering a well-thumb'd song-book,
and a rustic flageolet. The costume is taken from the Nasmyth portrait,
which has been follow'd for the features of the face.
A WORD ABOUT TENNYSON
Beautiful as the song was, the original "Locksley Hall" of half a
century ago was essentially morbid, heart-broken, finding fault with
everything, especially the fact of money's being made (as it ever must
be, and perhaps should be) the paramount matter in worldly affairs;
Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.
First, a father, having fallen in battle, his child (the singer)
Was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.
Of course love ensues. The woman in the chant or monologue proves a
false one; and as far as appears the ideal of woman, in the poet's
reflections, is a false one--at any rate for America. Woman is _not_
"the lesser man." (The heart is not the brain.) The best of the piece of
fifty years since is its concluding line:
For the mighty wind arises roaring seaward and I go.
Then for this current 1886-7, a just-out sequel, which (as an apparently
authentic summary says) "reviews the life of mankind during the past
sixty years, and comes to the conclusion that its boasted progress is of
doubtful credit to the world in general and to England in particular. A
cynical vein of denunciation of democratic opinions and aspirations runs
throughout the poem in mark'd contrast with the spirit of the poet's
youth." Among the most striking lines of this sequel are the following:
Envy wears the mask of love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to weakest as to strongest, 'Ye are equals, equal born,'
Equal-born! Oh yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
Charm us, orator, till the lion look no larger than the cat:
Till the cat, through that mirage of overheated language, loom
Larger than the lion Demo--end in working its own doom.
Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street,
Set the feet above the brain, and swear the brain is in the feet,
Bring the old dark ages back, without the faith, without the hope.
Beneath the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down
the slope.
I should say that all this is a legitimate consequence of the tone
and convictions of the earlier standards and points of view. Then some
reflections, down to the hard-pan of this sort of thing.
The course of progressive politics (democracy) is so certain and
resistless, not only in America but in Europe, that we can well afford
the warning calls, threats, checks, neutralizings, in imaginative
literature, or any department, of such deep-sounding, and high-soaring
voices as Carlyle's and Tennyson's. Nay, the blindness, excesses, of the
prevalent tendency--the dangers of the urgent trends of our times--in my
opinion, need such voices almost more than any. I should, too, call it
a signal instance of democratic humanity's luck that it has such enemies
to contend with--so candid, so fervid, so heroic. But why do I say
enemies? Upon the whole is not Tennyson--and was not Carlyle (like an
honest and stern physician)--the true friend of our age?
Let me assume to pass verdict, or perhaps momentary judgment, for the
United States on this poet--a remov'd and distant position giving some
advantages over a nigh one. What is Tennyson's service to his race,
times, and especially to America? First, I should say--or at least not
forget--his personal character. He is not to be mention'das a rugged,
evolutionary, aboriginal force--but (and a great lesson is in it) he has
been consistent throughout with the native, healthy, patriotic
spinal element and promptings of himself. His moral line is local and
conventional, but it is vital and genuine. He reflects the uppercrust of
his time, its pale cast of thought--even its _ennui_. Then the simile
of my friend John Burroughs is entirely true, "his glove is a glove of
silk, but the hand is a hand of iron." He shows how one can be a royal
laureate, quite elegant and "aristocratic," and a little queer and
affected, and at the same time perfectly manly and natural. As to his
non-democracy, it fits him well, and I like him the better for it. I
guess we all like to have (I am sure I do) some one who presents those
sides of a thought, or possibility, different from our own--different
and yet with a sort of home-likeness--a tartness and contradiction
offsetting the theory as we view it, and construed from tastes and
proclivities not at all his own.
To me, Tennyson shows more than any poet I know (perhaps has been a
warning to me) how much there is in finest verbalism. There is such
a latent charm in mere words, cunning collocutions, and in the voice
ringing them, which he has caught and brought out, beyond all others--as
in the line,
And hollow, hollow, hollow, all delight,
in "The Passing of Arthur," and evidenced in "The Lady of Shalott," "The
Deserted House," and many other pieces. Among the best (I often linger
over them again and again) are "Lucretius," "The Lotos Eaters," and "The
Northern Farmer." His mannerism is great, but it is a noble and welcome
mannerism. His very best work, to me, is contain'd in the books of "The
Idylls of the King," and all that has grown out of them. Though
indeed we could spare nothing of Tennyson, however small or however
peculiar--not "Break, Break," nor "Flower in the Crannied Wall," nor the
old, eternally-told passion of "Edward Gray:"
Love may come and love may go,
And fly like a bird from tree to tree.
But I will love no more, no more
Till Ellen Adair come back to me.
Yes, Alfred Tennyson's is a superb character, and will help give
illustriousness, through the long roll of time, to our Nineteenth
Century. In its bunch of orbic names, shining like a constellation
of stars, his will be one of the brightest. His very faults, doubts,
swervings, doublings upon himself, have been typical of our age. We are
like the voyagers of a ship, casting off for new seas, distant shores.
We would still dwell in the old suffocating and dead haunts, remembering