You know the story: how ploughing one winter day he upturned the mouse and its nest; the driver ran after it with the spade or pattle to kill it, as it scampered and wriggled along the furrows, till Burns called him back, asking what harm the mouse had done him. The fellow couldn't answer. That night Burns waked him up in the garret where they slept, and read him the poem, saying: "What do you think o' the wee moosie now?' You can almost see it : Wee, sleekit, cou'rin', tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie ! Thou needna start awa sae hasty-Wi' bickering prattle, Has broken Nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion-Which makes thee startle An' cosy, here, beneath the blast-Thou thought to dwell, That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble Has cost thee mony a weary nibble! Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble-But house or hald, In proving foresight may be vain; The best laid schemes o' mice an' men-Gang aft a-gley, (And next comes, as always with Burns, the subjective or personal view :) Still thou art blest, compared wi' me, The present only toucheth thee; But, och! I backward cast my e'e-On prospects drear, In all his poems, Burns is a true and typical lyric poet -lyric poets being such as compose or "sing" little poems to be accompanied on the harp or lyre (whence their name). King David and his Psalms stand at the head and front of lyric poetry. Burns is thus in direct antithesis to the dramatic poets, of whom Shakspere is chief. Shakspere, the dramatist, makes his characters think their own thoughts, speak their own words, wear their own dress-not Shakspere's thoughts or words or dress, for Shakspere's self we never see nor hear nor feel. Not one sentence can be educed from any of his seven hundred characters, as Shakspere's own private, personal opinion. Shakspere stands back, behind the screen; he simply turns the handle of the great photophono-mento-graphic machine that takes in all that comes along; but he himself remains as unaffected as a mirror carried down the street, reflecting everything alike, the beggar and the king. Shakspere has thus neither part nor lot in the virtues or the failings of his characters; he stands by, coldly laughing at the foibles and weaknesses of men. In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," when he sees two young couples hopelessly overhead and ears in love, he can make his mocking spirit, Puck, exclaim: "Lord, what fools these mortals be." Burns, a true lyric poet, could not have made such a cold, unpersonal statement as that. He must always mix himself up with his subject. Had he been in Puck's place, seeing what Puck saw, he would doubtless have exclaimed: "Lor', what a fool am I, for not being there myself;" or, what would have been equally true of Burns, "Lor', what a fool am I for having been there so often before." As a matter of fact, 'tis said, Burns was in half the love affairs of half the County of Ayr, and wrote half the love-letters of half the swains of his district to their girls; yes, and he also wrote the replies of the girls to those very letters he himself had written to them! Shakspere, the dramatist, dipt his pen in the humours of his brain, and so wrote to the heads of all. Burns, the lyrist, dipt his pen in his own heart's blood, and so wrote, not to the heads, but to the hearts of all. Every human, every living, organism has got a heart-sometimes two, for a time; but a head is an outside thing, a sort of addition or after-thought. Some people seem to have neither head nor neck on them. Burns, like all lyric poets, makes everything pass through the filter of his own heart and feelings, and so presents himself continually before us; he is no vague generaliser; but in this narrower field he pours a fuller light, in this glowing focus he concentrates a more devouring fire, so that he can brighten up and consume in rapture or despair whatever approaches near himself. "The Dying Ewe,' "The Wounded Hare," "The Mouse," and even lifeless things, like rivers, rocks, and winds, or the tiny "Daisy" on the sod, when represented and idealised (in the light, and by the right, of poetry), are brought in his verse so near his heart as to become new portraits of the poet Burns himself. Take the "Daisy;" it, too, had been unwittingly upturned by the plough. Its early January birth and its untimely doom were both historic and prophetic of his own Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth--Amid the storm Thou lifts thy unassuming head-In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed -And low thou lies! And then comes the human and personal reflection, where the Daisy becomes the poet himself, and its history and fate include his own : Such is the fate of simple Bard, On Life's rough ocean luckless starr'd; Till billows rage, and gales blow hard-And 'whelm him o'er! Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate-Full on thy bloom- But Burns's sympathy is not confined even to the inanimate creation, for in his unbounded generosity he has ventured even beyond the limits of the Hebrew Revelation, and sought and prayed for the redemption of the arch-fiend, Satan, himself. This poem, "To the Deil," is one of his most characteristic. It is full of humour, full of sympathy, full of side-blasts at superstition, yet without offending the superstitious, and full of a great many other things besides. Like the man who, when dying, not knowing if he should go up or down, and wishing to propitiate the rulers of both light and darkness, prayed alternately "good God," "good Devil," so Burns begins this poem with an attempted propitiation of the Deil. It is always wise, at any rate, to keep on good terms with bad folks; good folks will do you no harm any way. Of course, as Browning says: 'Tis better to be good than bad, 'Tis safer being mild than fierce; and Burns had no special hope or wish to meet his Satanic Majesty later on; but millions of other people must encounter him, and might find it well to have "a friend at court"! So Burns begins: O thou, whatever title suit thee, Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie, Wha in yon cavern grim an' sootie,-Clos'd under hatches, Whyles, ranging like a roarin' lion, For prey, a' holes an' corners tryin'; Whyles, on the strong-wing'd Tempest flyin'-Tirlin' the kirks; I've heard my reverend Graunie say, Or where auld ruined castles gray-Nod to the moon, Ae dreary, windy, winter night, The stars shot down wi' sklentin' light, Each bristl'd hair stood like a snake, When, wi' an eldritch stoor, "Quaick, quaick,"-Amang the springs, Awa ye squattered like a drake-On whistlin' wings. Long syne, in Eden's bonie yard, When youthfu' lovers first were pair'd, An' all the soul of love they shared-The raptured hour, Ye came to Paradise incog., An' played on man a cursed brogue-(Black be your fa'); D'ye mind that day, when in a bizz, Wi' reckit duds and rostit gizz, Ye did present your smoutie phiz--'Mang better folk, An' now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin' A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin', Some luckless hour will send him linkin'-To your black pit, O wad ye tak' a thought an' men', Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken-Still hae a stake; But this widespread sympathy of Burns, his good fellowship with all sorts and conditions of men, and his tendency to rhyming, which was then thought low and trivial, made many of his old hard-headed neighbours look askance at him; and when he won the heart and hand of his "Bonnie Jean," her father was furious, and almost forced her to give up the reckless rhymster. Burns was in despair; he tried to leave the country, and got a post as clerk or slave-driver in the island of Jamaica. But how was he to pay his passage? His little fugitive poems had won some local fame, but brought no return in cash. His friends advised him to put his poems together and have them published in a book. This he did, and the first edition of his works appeared from the country press at Kilmarnock in 1786. The fame of the book spread through the country like wildfire or the news of an invasion. Old and young, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, parson and peasant were alike delighted with the wit and fire and naturalness of the ploughman's poems. Twenty pounds were cleared by the edition, his passage-money was paid, and his trunk put on board for Jamaica. The sailing of that ship was somehow delayed— "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will "; and in the interval Burns's fame was rising faster than the rising tide. He was being complimented, visited, written to, invited; and the canny old Scot, Armour, finding a better prospect for his daughter, allowed their marriage to take place, and Burns's married life was one of the happiest in the annals of married poets. Another of the few golden threads that run through Burns's life also began at this time-viz., his acquaintance with Mrs. Dunlop, a descendant of the great Sir William Wallace. She was ill, given up by the physicians; she |
