The Canongate Burns (47 page)
Read The Canongate Burns Online
Authors: Robert Burns
This is not so out of control as it seems. As well as alluding âdeath's thousand doors' from Blair's
The Grave
, his reference to âthe British Constitution, on Revolution principles next after my God', is an escape clause since the establishment Tories and Whig radicals interpreted the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution wholly differently. The former group saw it as perfectly formed and finished. The latter saw it as the embryo for indefinite reformative change. This first letter to Fintry was followed on 5th January by a more considered point by point rebuttal of the charges against him. He repeats his defence of the British Constitution. He denies his involvement in a Dumfries theatrical disturbance where the singing of the national anthem was overwhelmed by the provocative French revolutionary song,
Ãa ira
. He claims to have weaned himself of his French affiliations after an imperial France's annexation of Savoy and an invasion of Holland's rights. What is, however, most relevant to his subsequent anonymous radical poetry is his disclaimer of all knowledge of Captain Johnston, the publisher of the dissenting
Edinburgh Gazetteer
.
Of Johnston, the publisher of the Edinr. Gazetteer, I know nothing.âOne evening in company with four or five friends, we met with his prospectus which we thought manly and independant; & I wrote to him, ordering his paper for us.â If you think that I act improperly in allowing his Paper to come addressed to me, I shall immediately countermand it.âI never so judge me, God wrote a line of prose for the Gazetteer in my life.
The key word here, of course, is
prose
. It is also a defence based on the letter not the spirit of his previous communication with Captain Johnston. As he wrote to Johnston on 13th November, 1792, describing the magazine as âthe first Composition of the kind in Europe':
Go on, Sir! Lay bare, with undaunted heart & steady hand, that horrid mass of corruption called Politics & State-Craft. Dare to draw in their native colors these
âCalm, thinking VILLAINS who no faith can fix'
whatever be the shiboleth (sic) of their pretended Party (Quotation from Pope's
The Temple of Fame
, l. 410).
As to the poem itself, its genesis can be dated from a letter to Mrs Dunlop written three years before the poem was sent to Fintry:
I began a Work lately, but what that work may be, I am totally ignorant.âAs Young says, â 'Tis nonsense destined to be future sense.'âI sent you a fragment of it by my last: take the following rough Sketch of the intended beginning, & let me know your opinion of the linesâ The Poet's Progress, An embryotic Poem in the womb of futurity (ll. 9â55, quoted).
Thus far only have I proceeded, & perhaps I may never again resume the subject.âI must mention one caution to you, Madam, with respect to these verses; I have a remote idea that I may one day use them as instruments of vengeance, & consequently I will hide them like a Conspirator's dagger (Letter 281).
Burns, indeed, as political poet is the archetypal smiler with a knife. This poem, however, has no specific targets but is a general analysis of the multi-displaced poetic personality. Kinsley was innately hostile to Burns's incursions into such Augustan linguistically
and thematically derived terrain. The poem, then, has never had the attention it deserves. This is literally true, as Hogg discovered that ll. 17â36 of Burns's poem were compressed by Coleridge into a twelve-line verse and sent in a letter to Josiah Wade at Bristol
circa
February 10, 1796. These lines appear in the Oxford Coleridge under the title
Habent Sunt Fata Poetae
and are wrongly defined as a sonnet by Molly Lefebre in her
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Bondage
of Opium
(London: 1977), p. 175. Here is Coleridge's compressed version:
The Fox, and Statesman subtile wiles ensure,
The Cit, and Polecat stink and are secure:
Toads with their venom, Doctors with their drug,
The Priest, the Hedgehog, in their robes are snug!
5
Oh, Nature! cruel step-mother, and hard,
To thy poor, naked, fenceless child the Bard!
No Horns but those by luckless Hymen worn,
And those, (alas! alas!) not Plenty's Horn!
With naked feelings, and with aching pride,
10
He bears th' unbroken blast on every side!
Vampire Booksellers drain him to the heart,
And Scorpion Critics cureless venom dart!
The problem of plagiarism in Coleridge is notorious though in this case, a private letter, he was not obviously trying to pass the Burns lines off as his own. What it does demonstrate, however, is not only the relevance Coleridge felt Burns's perceptions had for his own awareness of his situation as poet but the degree to which Burns was self-consciously, creatively aware of the chronic social, political, critical and economic dilemma of poetry since the early part of the eighteenth century. Carol McGuirk, always eruditely atuned to the resonances of canonical English poetry in Burns, notes with regard to this poem that âamong the sources for ll. 56â71, with their imagery of blissful folly and triumphant Dulness are Pope's
Dunciad
and Swift's â¦
Tale of a Tub
.' It is problematic as to how much of Swift Burns knew. Both were peculiarly displaced men: Burns by reason of class and Swift more by ethnicity. The psychological traumas of this were creatively compensated for in the terms of the manner in which their consequent detached, disguised personas could, with varied laughter, undermine the madness of institutionalised power especially in both its monarchical and Presbyterian states. It also seems from the textual evidence highly probable that this Burns poem is partly based on a reading of what Swift himself considered
his greatest poem,
On Poetry: A Rapsody
. Here is the opening of Swift:
All Human Race wou'd fain be
Wits
And Millions miss, for one that hits
Young's universal Passion,
Pride
,
Was never known to spread so wide.
5
Say
Britain
, cou'd you ever boast,â
Three
Poets
in an Age at most?
Our chilling Climate hardly bears
A
Sprig
of Bays in Fifty Years:
While ev'ry Fool his Claim alledges,
10
As if it grew in common Hedges.
What Reason can there be assign'd
For this Perverseness in the Mind?
Brutes
find out where their Talents lie:
A
Bear
will not attempt to fly:
15
A founder'd
Horse
will oft debate,
Before he tries a five-barr'd Gate:
A Dog by Instinct turns aside,
Who sees the Ditch too deep and wide.
But
Man
we find the only Creature,
20
Who, led by
Folly
, fights with
Nature
;
Who, when
she
loudly cries,
Forbear
,
With Obstinacy fixes there;
And, where his
Genius
least inclines,
Absurdly bends his whole Designs.
25
         Not
Empire
to the Rising-Sun
By Valour, Conduct, Fortune won;
Nor highest
Wisdom
in Debates
For framing Laws to govern States;
Nor Skill in Sciences profound,
30
So large to grasp the Circle round;
Such heavenly Influence require,
As how to strike the
Muses Lyre
.
         Not Beggar's Brat, on Bulk begot;
Nor Bastard of a Pedlar Scot;
35
Nor Boy brought up to cleaning Shoes,
The Spawn of
Bridewell
, or the Stews;
Nor Infants dropt, the spurious Pledges
Of
Gipsies
littering under Hedges,
Are so disqualified by Fate
40
To rise in
Church
, or
Law
, or
State
,
As he, whom
Phebus
in his Ire
Hath
blasted
with poetick Fire.
         What hope of Custom in the
Fair
,
While not a soul demands your Ware?
45
Where you have nothing to produce
For private Life, or publick Use?
Court, City, Country
want you not;
You cannot bribe, betray, or plot.
For Poets, Law makes no Provision:
50
The Wealthy have you in Derision.
Of State-Affairs you cannot smatter,
Are awkward when you try to flatter.
Both poems are obsessed with the dysfunctional role of the poet in a world where everything else is functionally placed. While Burns is more inclined to place the problem in the innate character of the poet, he is wholly complicit with Swift's analysis of a creative environment warped by the decline of aristocratic patronage, the corrupting effects of the new commercial, book-selling world and the institutionalisation of a rule-bound, pretentious criticism. Burns was a political radical but he is also as hierarchical and é litist as Tory Swift or Pope in his notion that the waters of the Helicon were increasingly polluted by usurping pseudo-poets. As he wrote to Mrs Dunlop: âBesides, my success has encouraged such a shoal of ill-spawned monsters to crawl into public notice under the title of Scots Poets, that the very term, Scots poetry, borders on the burlesque'. Nor does he, despite Kinsley, suffer in the depth of the quality of his analysis with Swift.
L.7 again echoes Burns's obsession with the sufferings and response of Job. âAmalthea's horn' (l. 30) was the horn of Zeus's nurse-goat which became a cornucopia unlike the more probably worn cuckold horns of the married (Hymen is the goddess of marriage) poet. Ll. 39â40 brilliantly extend a medical joke probably triggered by Pope's reference in
Imitations of Horace
, Ep.II.ii, l. 70 where he refers to James Monro, the physician of Bedlam: âSure I should want Care of ten
Munroes
'. Burns's Monro is Alexander Munro (1733â1817) part of a great Edinburgh medical dynasty who took up that city's first chair in surgery in 1777 in a world of amputation without anaesthetics.
1
In adapted form, lines 17â36 are found erroneously attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the Oxford edition of Coleridge, under the Latin title âHabent Sua Fata â Poetae'. See p. 587, Appendix 1, âFirst Drafts, Early Versions'. The lines were found in a Coleridge letter, dated January 1796. They were first ascribed to Coleridge in Cottle's
Early Recollections
(1839). Coleridge evidently identified strongly with Burns's view on critics and the fate of poets. It is surely a compliment to Burns's ability to write verse in English that this piece has been mistakenly attributed to one of England's finest poets.
First printed in the Edinburgh edition, 1793.
The wind blew hollow frae the hills,
from
      By fits the sun's departing beam
Look'd on the fading yellow woods
      That wav'd o'er Lugar's winding stream;
5
Beneath a craigy steep, a Bard,
craggy precipice
      Laden with years, and meikle pain,
much
In loud lament bewail'd his lord,
      Whom Death had all untimely ta'en.
taken
He lean'd him to an ancient aik,
oak
10
      Whose trunk was mould'ring down with years;
His locks were bleached white with time,
      His hoary cheek was wet wi' tears;
And as he touch'd his trembling harp,
      And as he tun'd his doleful sang,
song
15
The winds, lamenting thro' their caves,
      To echo bore the notes alang!
along
âYe scatter'd birds that faintly sing
      The reliques of the vernal quire;
Ye woods that shed on a' the winds
20
      The honours of the aged year!
A few short months, and glad and gay,
      Again ye'll charm the ear and e'e;
eye
But nocht in all revolving time
nothing
      Can gladness bring again to me.
25
âI am a bending aged tree,
      That long has stood the wind and rain;
But now has come a cruel blast,
      And my last hold of earth is gane:
gone
Nae leaf o' mine shall greet the spring,
no
30
      Nae simmer sun exalt my bloom;
no
But I maun lie before the storm,
must
      And ithers plant them in my room.
others
âI've seen sae monie changefu' years,
so many
      On earth I am a stranger grown:
35
I wander in the ways of men,
      Alike unknowing and unknown:
Unheard, unpitied, unreliev'd,
      I bear alane my lade o' care,
alone, load
For silent, low, on beds of dust,
40
      Lie a' that would my sorrows share.
all
âAnd last (the sum of a' my griefs!)
all
      My noble master lies in clay;
The flower amang our barons bold,
among
      His country's pride, his country's stay:
45
In weary being now I pine,
      For a' the life of life is dead,
And hope has left my aged ken,
orbit
      On forward wing for ever fled.
âAwake thy last sad voice, my harp!
50
      The voice of woe and wild despair!
Awake! resound thy latest lay â
      Then sleep in silence evermair!
evermore
And thou, my last, best, only friend,
      That fillest an untimely tomb,
55
Accept this tribute from the Bard
      Thou brought from Fortune's mirkest gloom.
darkest
âIn Poverty's low barren vale,
      Thick mists, obscure, involv'd me round;
Though oft I turn'd the wistful eye,
60
      Nae ray of fame was to be found:
no
Thou found'st me, like the morning sun
      That melts the fogs in limpid air,
The friendless Bard and rustic song
      Became alike thy fostering care.
65
âO why has Worth so short a date?
      While villains ripen grey with time;
Must thou, the noble, gen'rous, great,
      Fall in bold manhood's hardy prime!
Why did I live to see that day?
70
      A day to me so full of woe!
O had I met the mortal shaft
      Which laid my benefactor low!
âThe bridegroom may forget the bride,
      Was made his wedded wife yestreen;
yesterday evening
75
The monarch may forget the crown
      That on his head an hour has been;
The mother may forget the child
      That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;
so
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
80
      And a' that thou hast done for me!'
James Cunningham (1748â91), 14th Earl of Glencairn was Burns's most important actual and potential patron. His premature death, dying at Falmouth on 30th January, 1791, after, like Henry Fielding, an unsuccessful winter in the Portuguese sun to regain his health, was a blow from which Burns never recovered. Burns went into deep mourning and for the Kilmarnock funeral proposed to âcross the country and steal among the croud, to pay a tear to the last sight of my ever-revered Benefactor' (Letters 438, 439 467).
Despite De Quincey's scepticism about all Burns's patrons, Glencairn does seem to have been of tangible support. The letter of introduction that Burns carried to Edinburgh from Dalrymple of Orangefield, his wife was the Earl's sister, was sufficient to persuade Glencairn, an enthusiast for the Kilmarnock edition, that his Ayrshire compatriot deserved his influential support. Due to Glencairn, the aristocratic Caledonian Hunt subscribed to a man, making the first Edinburgh edition a runaway success.
There is a particular warmth in the three extant letters from Burns to Glencairn. Like Lord Daer, Glencairn appears to have been one of those very few Whig Friends of the People, who, theoretically politically sympathetic, were not driven by condescending egotism and anti-Tory ambition and not real commitment to the common people. Unlike, say, the Riddells, there is little ambivalence in Burns towards Glencairn as the following anecdote from Kinsley reveals:
Glencairn was the only nobleman who offended the poet's social sensibilities without incurring irrational abuse. On one occasion in Edinburgh, says Burns, he showed âengrossing attention ⦠to the only blockhead at table, as there was none but his Lordship, the Dunderpate and myself, that I was within half a point of throwing down my gage of contemptuous defiance, but he shook my hand and looked so benevolently good at parting â God bless him! Though I should never see
him more, I shall love him until my dying day! I am pleased to think I am so capable of throes of gratitude, as I am miserably deficient in some other virtues' (2CPB, p. 5).
It is, of course, absolutely typical of Kinsley that satirical dissent from Burns's socially inferior position always tends to the irrational. Kinsley had neither adequate knowledge nor sympathy for the radical politics of the late eighteenth century. Thus he does not bring to our attention the fact that Glencairn was a Foxite, supporting the India Bill, or, more crucially, that he possibly belonged to that still largely submerged radical network so that the spy-administrator, Home Office Under-Secretary Spottiswood, dared to âsend Sheriffs against⦠such an august personage as the Earl of Glencairn' (See Robert Thornton's
William Maxwell to Robert Burns
, John Donald, Edinburgh: 1979, p. 65).
Like his
Lament for Mary, Queen of Scots
, the regular ballad-like metre (two sets of long-line couplets broken into tetrameters) is formally the reverse of MacPherson's Ossianic epic. The tone and language of the poem, including Biblical echoes, as Kinsley notes, to
Ecclesiastes
and
Job
, is, however, deliberately pervaded by the tone and verbal imagery of that work. To some extent, though the poem grows increasingly personal, this simultaneously distances Burns from his pain and invokes enormous Ossianic power of a world irretrievably lost and existing only in Bardic lament.
