Delphi Complete Works of Robert Burns (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) (186 page)

Here, too, as at Blair, the ducal hosts seem to have entirely succeeded in making Burns feel at ease, and wish to protract his visit. But here, too, more emphatically than at Blair, his friend spoilt the game. This is the account of the incident, as given by Lockhart, with a few additions interpolated from Chambers: —

“Burns, who had been much noticed by this noble family when in Edinburgh, happened to present himself at Gordon Castle, just at the dinner-hour, and being invited to take a place at the table, did so, without for a moment adverting to the circumstance that his travelling companion had been left alone at the inn, in the adjacent village. On remembering this soon after dinner, he begged to be allowed to rejoin his friend; and the Duke of Gordon, who now for the first time learned that he was not journeying alone, immediately proposed to send an invitation to Mr. Nicol to come to the Castle. His Grace sent a messenger to bear it; but Burns insisted on himself accompanying him. They found the haughty schoolmaster striding up and down before the inn-door in a high state of wrath and indignation at, what he considered, Burns’s neglect, and no apologies could soften his mood. He had already ordered horses, and was venting his anger on
the postillion for the slowness with which he obeyed his commands. The poet, finding that he must choose between the ducal circle and his irascible associate, at once chose the latter alternative. Nicol and he, in silence and mutual displeasure, seated themselves in the post-chaise, and turned their backs on Gordon Castle, where the poet had promised himself some happy days. This incident may serve to suggest some of the annoyances to which persons moving, like our poet, on the debatable land between two different ranks of society must ever be subjected.” “To play the lion under such circumstances must,” as the knowing Lockhart observes, “be difficult at the best; but a delicate business indeed, when the jackals are presumptuous. The pedant could not stomach the superior success of his friend, and yet — alas for poor human nature! — he certainly was one of the most enthusiastic of his admirers, and one of the most affectionate of all his intimates.” It seems that the Duchess of Gordon had some hope that her friend, Mr. Addington, afterwards Lord Sidmouth and the future premier, would have visited at Gordon Castle while Burns was there. Mr. Addington was, Allan Cunningham tells us, an enthusiastic admirer of Burns’s poetry, and took pleasure in quoting it to Pitt and Melville. On that occasion he was unfortunately not able to accept the invitation of the Duchess, but he forwarded to her “these memorable lines — memorable as the first indication of that deep love which England now entertains for the genius of Burns:” —

Yes! pride of Scotia’s favoured plains, ‘tis thine
The warmest feelings of the heart to move;
To bid it throb with sympathy divine,
To glow with friendship, or to melt with love.

What
though each morning sees thee rise to toil,
Though Plenty on thy cot no blessing showers,
Yet Independence cheers thee with her smile,
And Fancy strews thy moorland with her flowers!

And dost thou blame the impartial will of Heaven,
Untaught of life the good and ill to scan?
To thee the Muse’s choicest wreath is given —
To thee the genuine dignity of man!

Then to the want of worldly gear resigned,
Be grateful for the wealth of thy exhaustless mind.

It was well enough for Mr. Addington, and such as he, to advise Burns to be content with the want of worldly gear, and to refer him for consolation to the dignity of man and the wealth of his exhaustless mind. Burns had abundance of such sentiments in himself to bring forth, when occasion required. He did not need to be replenished with these from the stores of men who held the keys of patronage. What he wanted from them was some solid benefit, such as they now and then bestowed on their favourites, but which unfortunately they withheld from Burns.

An intelligent boy, who was guide to Burns and Nicol from Cullen to Duff House, gave long afterwards his remembrances of that day. Among these this occurs. The boy was asked by Nicol if he had read Burns’s poems, and which of them he liked best. The boy replied, “‘I was much entertained with
The Twa Dogs
and
Death and Dr. Hornbook
, but I like best
The Cotter’s Saturday Night
, although it made me
greet
when my father had me to read it to my mother.’ Burns, with a sudden start, looked at my face intently, and patting my shoulder, said, ‘Well, my callant, I don’t wonder at your
greeting
at reading the poem; it made me greet more than once when I was writing it at my father’s fireside.’”...

On
the 16th of September, 1787, the two travellers returned to Edinburgh. This tour produced little poetry directly, and what it did produce was not of a high order. In this respect one cannot but contrast it with the poetic results of another tour made, partly over the same ground, by another poet, less than twenty years after this time. When Wordsworth and his sister made their first visit to Scotland in 1803, it called forth some strains of such perfect beauty as will live while the English language lasts. Burns’s poetic fame would hardly be diminished if all that he wrote on his tours were obliterated from his works. Perhaps we ought to except some allusions in his future songs, and especially that grand song,
Macpherson’s Farewell
, which, though composed several months after this tour was over, must have drawn its materials from the day spent at Duff House, where he was shown the sword of the Highland Reiver.

But look at the lines composed after his first sight of Breadalbane, which he left in the inn at Kenmore. These Lockhart has pronounced among “the best of his purely English heroics.” If so, we can but say how poor are the best! What is to be thought of such lines as

Poetic ardours in my bosom swell,
Lone wandering by the hermit’s mossy cell, &c., &c.

Nor less stilted, forced, and artificial are the lines in the same measure written at the Fall of Fyers.

The truth is, that Burns’s
forte
by no means lay in describing scenery alone, and for its own sake. All his really inspired descriptions of it occur as adjuncts to human incident or feeling, slips of landscape let in as a background. Again, as Burns was never at his best when called on to write for occasions — no really spontaneous poet
ever can be — so when taken to see much talked-of scenes, and expected to express poetic raptures over them, Burns did not answer to the call.

“He disliked,” we are told, “to be tutored in matters of taste, and could not endure that one should run shouting before him, whenever any fine object came in sight.” On one occasion of this kind, a lady at the poet’s side said, “Burns, have you nothing to say of this?” “Nothing, madam,” he replied, glancing at the leader of the party, “for an ass is braying over it.” Burns is not the only person who has suffered from this sort of officiousness.

Besides this, the tours were not made in the way which most conduces to poetic composition. He did not allow himself the quiet and the leisure from interruption which are needed. It was not with such companions as Ainslie or Nicol by his side that the poet’s eye discovered new beauty in the sight of a solitary reaper in a Highland glen, and his ear caught magical suggestiveness in the words, “What! you are stepping westward,” heard by the evening lake.

Another hindrance to happy poetic description by Burns during these journeys was that he had now forsaken his native vernacular, and taken to writing in English after the mode of the poets of the day. This with him was to unclothe himself of his true strength. His correspondent, Dr. Moore, and his Edinburgh critics had no doubt counselled him to write in English, and he listened for a time too easily to their counsel. He and they little knew what they were doing in giving and taking such advice. The truth is, when he used his own Scottish dialect he was unapproached, unapproachable; no poet before or since has evoked out of that instrument so perfect and so varied melodies. When he wrote in English
he was seldom more than third-rate; in fact, he was but a common clever versifier. There is but one purely English poem of his which at all approaches the first rank — the lines
To Mary in Heaven
.

These may probably have been the reasons, but the fact is certain that Burns’s tours are disappointing in their direct poetic fruits. But in another way Burns turned them to good account. He had by that time begun to devote himself almost entirely to the cultivation of Scottish song. This was greatly encouraged by the appearance of
Johnson’s Museum
, a publication in which an engraver of that name living in Edinburgh had undertaken to make a thorough collection of all the best of the old Scottish songs, accompanying them with the best airs, and to add to these any new songs of merit which he could lay hands on. Before Burns left Edinburgh for his Border tour, he had begun an acquaintance and correspondence with Johnson, and had supplied him with four songs of his own for the first volume of
The Museum
. The second volume was now in progress, and his labours for this publication, and for another of the same kind to be afterwards mentioned, henceforth engrossed Burns’s entire productive faculty, and were to be his only serious literary work for the rest of his life. He therefore employed the Highland tour in hearing all he could, that had any bearing on his now absorbing pursuit, and in collecting materials that might promote it. With this view, when on his way from Taymouth to Blair, he had turned aside to visit the famous fiddler and composer of Scotch tunes, Neil Gow, at his house, which is still pointed out, at Inver, on the Braan water, opposite the grounds of Dunkeld. This is the entry about him in Burns’s diary:— “Neil Gow plays — a short, stout-built, honest Highland figure,
with his grey hair shed on his honest social brow; an interesting face marking strong sense, kind open-heartedness, mixed with unmistrusting simplicity; visit his house; Margaret Gow.” It is interesting to think of this meeting of these two — the one a Lowlander, the other a Highlander; the one the greatest composer of words, the other of tunes, for Scottish songs, which their country has produced.

As he passed through Aberdeen, Burns met Bishop Skinner, a Bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church; and when he learnt that the Bishop’s father, the author of the song of
Tulloch-gorum
, and
The Ewie wi’ the crookit horn
, and other Scottish songs, was still alive, an aged Episcopalian clergyman, living in primitive simplicity in
a but and a ben
at Lishart, near Peterhead, and that on his way to Aberdeen he had passed near the place without knowing it, Burns expressed the greatest regret at having missed seeing the author of songs he so greatly admired. Soon after his return to Edinburgh, he received from old Mr. Skinner a rhyming epistle, which greatly pleased the poet, and to which he replied,— “I regret, and while I live shall regret, that when I was north I had not the pleasure of paying a younger brother’s dutiful respect to the author of the best Scotch song ever Scotland saw,
Tulloch-gorum’s my delight
.” This is strong, perhaps too strong praise. Allan Cunningham, in his
Songs of Scotland
, thus freely comments on it:— “
Tulloch-gorum
is a lively clever song, but I would never have edited this collection had I thought with Burns that it is the best song Scotland ever saw. I may say with the king in my favourite ballad, —

I trust I have within my realm,
Five hundred good as he.”

We
also find Burns, on his return to Edinburgh, writing to the librarian at Gordon Castle to obtain from him a correct copy of a Scotch song composed by the Duke, in the current vernacular style,
Cauld Kail in Aberdeen
. This correct copy he wished to insert in the forthcoming volume of
Johnson’s Museum
, with the name of the author appended.

At Perth he made inquiries, we are told, “as to the whereabouts of the burn-brae on which be the graves of Bessy Bell and Mary Gray.” Whether he actually visited the spot, near the Almond Water, ten miles west of Perth, is left uncertain. The pathetic story of these two hapless maidens, and the fine old song founded on it, had made it to him a consecrated spot.

O Bessy Bell and Mary Gray!
They were twa bonny lasses,
They biggit a bower on yon burn-brae,
And theekit it owre wi’ rashes,

is the beginning of a beautiful song which Allan Ramsay did his best to spoil, as he did in many another instance. Sir Walter Scott afterwards recovered some of the old verses which Ramsay’s had superseded, and repeated them to Allan Cunningham, who gives them in his
Songs of Scotland
. Whether Burns knew any more of the song than the one old verse given above, with Ramsay’s appended to it, is more than doubtful.

As he passed through Perth he secured an introduction to the family of Belches of Invermay, that, on crossing the river Earn on his southward journey, he might be enabled to see the little valley, running down from the Ochils to the Earn, which has been consecrated by the old and well-known song,
The Birks of Invermay
.

It
thus appears that the old songs of Scotland, their localities, their authors, and the incidents whence they arose, were now uppermost in the thoughts of Burns, whatever part of his country he visited. This was as intense and as genuinely poetical an interest, though a more limited one, than that with which Walter Scott’s eye afterwards ranged over the same scenes. The time was not yet full come for that wide and varied sympathy, with which Scott surveyed the whole past of his country’s history, nor was Burns’s nature or training such as to give him that catholicity of feeling which was required to sympathize as Scott did, with all ranks and all ages. Neither could he have so seized on the redeeming virtues of rude and half-barbarous times, and invested them with that halo of romance which Scott has thrown over them. This romantic and chivalrous colouring was an element altogether alien to Burns’s character. But it may well be, that these very limitations intensified the depth and vividness of sympathy, with which Burns conceived the human situations portrayed in his best songs.