Burns's Later Life: His Songs.-Burns left Edinburgh after a second winter, somewhat richer in money and prospects, but with his energy relaxed. The flattery of the great had not turned his head, but the dissipations of the capital and the long period of idleness had weakened his purpose. Nevertheless he made a strong effort to recover the lost ground. He returned to Ayrshire with an appointment as "gauger" (inspector of the liquor customs) in his pocket, married Jean Armour, and took a farm at Ellisland, with the design of combining farming and revenue service. His duties covered ten parishes and compelled him to ride two hundred miles a week. What was worse, they threw him constantly into riotous company, where his wit and eloquence were always in uproarious demand. His farm naturally went to ruin, and he found time for little poetry except short snatches of song. With the exception of the "Jolly Beggars" and "Tam O'Shanter," Burns did no more sustained work. But he poured out in recompense hundreds of songs-love-songs, drinking songs, songs of patriotism, many of which are among the eternal possessions of the race. They have given Burns rank as the first of English song-writers. Their range is as wonderful as their quality. "From the loud flowing revel in 'Willie Brewed a Peck o' Maut,' to the still rapt enthusiasm of sadness for 'Mary in Heaven'; from the glad kind greeting of 'Auld Lang Syne,' or the comic archness of 'Duncan Gray,' to the fire-eyed fury of 'Scots Wha Hae Wi' Wallace Bled,' he has found a tone and words for every mood of man's heart." Although pressed for money, he refused to accept any pay for these songs. In the fast-gathering ruin of his life, he wished to dedicate this its noblest part to Scotland, and would take no wage for that which was indeed above all price. Sincerity and Vividness of Burns's Work.-The quality of Burns's poetry which first arrests a reader's interest, and which makes perhaps the most lasting impression, is its sincerity. In his English verse, to be sure, he often expresses himself in the stilted manner which was then fashionable. Even "The Cotter's Saturday Night" is hurt by passages where Burns deserts the Scotch dialect for conventional * Carlyle Essay on Burns, English speech. But it is not in his English verse that we find the real Burns. Everything that he wrote in his native dialect has the ring of absolute honesty. He expresses the truth of life as it appears to him, with penetrating frankness. His words have an indescribable intonation of heartiness, of careless conviction. His lyric strain has a curious arresting power, like that of certain human voices in whose tones there seems to vibrate an inner assurance of truth, though the words themselves are lightly, perhaps mockingly, spoken. Allied to this sincerity, but more external and easier to lay hold of, is the vividness of Burns's speech. In "The Twa Dogs" he not only gives us with a few airy touches a lively likeness of the Scotch collie Luath and the squire's St. Bernard, but fixes, as it were, the universal traits of doghood. In "The Holy Fair" there are scores of groups and single figures, touched in with marvellous lightness and rapidity, but as vivid as if bitten with aqua-fortis upon an etcher's plate. The infernal dance which Tam o'Shanter views in the ruined kirk, and his flight from the witches, show the same graphic power employed in portraying scenes of wild action. In "The Brigs of Ayr" and a score of other poems, it is manifested in the description of natural scenes. And where not an image but a feeling is to be evoked, Burns has the same energy of utterance. His words "go home" with an inevitable force and directness. Burns's Sympathy and Humor.-But it is neither his energy nor his sincerity which has made Burns the most widely beloved of English poets. It is rather his sympathy, the bright, warm geniality of nature which prompted him not only to accept everything human in the world of men about him, but to draw the life of beast and bird and flower into the circle of his humor and tenderness. For humor pervades his poetry, keeping it fresh and tonic and free from sentimentality. In "The Holy Fair" Burns tells us how he once met Fun come "skelpin' up the way," gay in her Sunday best. She came toward him "lap, skip, and loup, As light as onie lambie, offering to go with him to the fair, and promising him some "famous laughin'." She went with him, indeed, through life, even to the dark end; but the laughter which she brought him was never harsh or bitter; it was always generous and gay and kindly. Burns and the Romantic Revival.-In Burns, the eighteenth century had at last produced a man able to deliver literature from the bonds of convention. His vindication of the natural life, the natural instincts, humors, and affections, made untenable the narrow fortress of eighteenth-century taste. His glowing democracy of heart, which reached out to include in fellowship not only the least well-seen among men, but even the beasts of the field and birds of the air, robbed the aristocratic eighteenth-century ideal of its attraction. After Burns, the triumph of “romantic liberty," through the length and breadth of English letters, could not be long delayed. ་་ REVIEW OUTLINE.-It is important to note that the literary movement traced in this chapter was, as the title of the chapter indicates, a "revival." Romanticism, in the broad sense, was no new thing in English literature. "Beowulf" is "romantic"; so is the work of Chaucer, of Spenser, of Marlowe, and of Shakespeare; so is Pilgrim's Progress "; so, in almost all respects, are Comus," and "Paradise Lost," and even where Milton adopted "classical "standards he did so in a far freer way than did Dryden or Pope. The Romantic revival, therefore, is to be thought of as a return to the freedom which the great writers of earlier times had enjoyed. But the tyranny of the classical school was so excessive that the return to freer ways of thought, feeling, and speech took on the aspect of a conscious revolt. It became, toward the end of the eighteenth century, a kind of crusade, and poets fought for it as for a holy cause. It went hand in hand with a great religious revival under John Wesley, and with a great struggle for social and political freedom in France; and this gave to the literary movement extraordinary depth and intensity. To what earlier poets did the pioneers of the Romantic revival especially turn back? To what was due the renewed interest in the Middle Ages? In natural scenery? In strange lands and distant peoples? In the life of humble men? What parallelism is noted here between this period and that of the Renaissance? In what respects does the spirit that underlay this reaction indicate that the period between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries had been one of progress ? Note the statement that for two generations the first-hand study of nature had been neglected. In what poem did it first reappear? To what earlier poet did Thomson recur in his "Castle of Indolence"? Who is the most important poet of the new school among the writers of this period? Consider carefully what is said about his "seeing nature with a modern eye, as a living thing full of sentiment and meaning." Find something to illustrate this from the quotations given from Gray's prose. For which of these aspects of the spirit of the Romantic revival is Gray's" Elegy" best known? For which "The Bard"? What is "Percy's Reliques"? At what period were the most important of the early English ballads produced? (See Chap. IV.) In what esteem did Wordsworth hold these ballads? What was the current literary interest that inspired McPherson and Chatterton to make their famous literary imitations? What evidence is there from the opinions of other poets that Chatterton's gifts as a poet would have entitled him to high rank if he had lived? What is Cowper's most famous poem? Which of the interests of the Romantic revival does he show in "The Task"? What is the special character of the genius of William Blake? Among what conditions did Burns pass his early life? What influence did his father exert on him? What did Burns say of the character of this portion of his life? What evidence of its influence on him is to be gathered from his poems? At what time of his life did he do his best writing? What effect did his residence at Irvine have on his mind and character? For what purpose was Burns's first book of poems published? What was the immediate consequence of the publication of this volume? How did the life at Edinburgh affect Burns? What effects did this experience have on his after life? What portion of his literary work was done after his final retreat from Edinburgh? Find from your own reading illustrations of the qualities of Burns's poetry spoken of in the text. READING GUIDE.-The reading prescribed for the class upon this period will naturally be devoted chiefly to Gray and Burns. Gray's "Elegy" and "Bard" should be read by all. The following poems of Burns are recommended: "The Cotter's Saturday Night," "Tam o'Shanter," "Address to the Unco Guid," "The Twa Dogs," "To a Mountain Daisy," "To a Mouse," "Is There for Honest Poverty"? "John Anderson," "To Mary in Heaven," "Of a' the Airts,"” “A Red, Red Rose," "Bonnie Doon," and "Scots Wha Hae Wi' Wallace Bled." A convenient edition of Gray is that edited by W. L. Phelps, in the Athenæum Press series (Ginn). Selections from Cowper and Gray are given in the Riverside Literature series; Cowper's "Task" and other poems are included in Cassell's National Library. Lowell's essay upon Gray in "Latest Literary Essays," and Matthew Arnold's essay in "Essays in Criticism," are valuable. The life of Gray, by Edmund Gosse, in the English Men of Letters series, is entertaining. The Riverside Literature series (Houghton, Mifflin), includes a volume of selections from Burns with glossary of Scotch words. Carlyle's essay on Burns is not only invaluable as a commentary, but is itself a classic in the literature of the essay. R. L. Stevenson's “Familiar Studies of Men and Books" contains an excellent study of Burns's character, which may be supplemented by the widely dif ferent view taken by W. E. Henley, in the biography prefixed to the Cambridge edition of Burns (Houghton, Mifflin). |