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I

ETHE NEG-CLASSICAL ELEMENTS m mg, _
MIND AND‘ARTTOF ROBERT-BURNS . 7

Thais for tho Dogroo of Ph D
MICHEGAN STATE UNIVERSTTY
(Fredenck) Boyd Collins

1 ' 1957

 

 

THESIS

 

u
_....-.-—u

 

This is to certifg that the

thesis entitled ‘

1
The Neo-Classical Elements in the Mind E
and Art of Robert Burns I

presented bg ,j‘
(Frederick) Boyd Collins A

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph. D. degree mm

(Lanna/444%

Major professor

Date JUL-Ly 26 1 1957

0-169

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MiChigan
Applied
the

 

THE NEG-CLASSICAL ELEMENTS IN THE MIND AND
ART OF ROBERT BURNS

BY
(Frederick) Boyd Collins

A THESIS

Submitted to the School for Advanced Graduate Studies of
Michigan State University of Agriculture and
Applied Science in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1957

 

.. . 11W

 

hbmitted to 1:
Michigan
Applie

the

 

Approved :

   

 

1 &’/?'5A(
t iiid

 

THE NED—CLASSICAL ELEMENTS IN THE MIND AND
ART OF ROBERT BURNS 5'

By J
(Frederick) Boyd Collins

AN ABSTRACT

Submitted to the School for Advanced Graduate Studies of
Michigan State University of Agriculture and
Applied Science in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Engli sh

195'?

Approved: [an a C : a; I; é:

 

 

 

mind and
aspects,
the sigh
degree--
principl
influenc

show a n

which h
He borr
uslly
Romanti
lonelin

Ha
functic

whateve

 

ABSTRACT

Robert Burns is generally classified as a
transitional poet, one whose life, thought, and work
lie somewhere between those two aggressive and
distinctive literary forces-—the Romantic Revival
and the Augustan Age. The term Pre-Romantic, the
designation most frequently applied to Burns, tends to
focus attention upon those aspects of the Scotsman's
mind and art that presage Romanticism. The other
aspects, those that harken back to the first half of
the eighteenth century, have been stressed to a lesser
degree--in a few cases, ignored. Many of the artistic
principles, thought patterns, and environmental
influences that lie at the base of Burns's creativity
show a marked Augustan bent. The purpose of this
study is to point out these various Augustan elements
and to show why they may be termed Augustan.

Robert Burns considered himself and the time in
which he lived an integral part of the Augustan tradition.
He borrowed liberally from Neo—Glassical writers and us-
ually jproudly acknowledged his sources. Unlike some
Romantic Writers, he rarehrsuffered from artistic
loneliness.

Having no personal theories on the nature and
functions of art, Burns relied upon the Augustans for

whatever artistic principles and practices he needed.

 

 

In the lie
accepted

  
  
 

proverbial
For a
of Pepe an

mystical

 

 

the eeveri
In hi:
the 'very 1
essentiall;
sense view
the carnal
writer was
was only m
century,

The

satire.

opinion ti

 

 

(Frederick) Boyd Collins 2.

In the Nee-Classical manner, he used commonplace themes,
accepted and tried forms, a simple vocabulary, and
proverbial observations and truisms.

For a faith, Burns turned to the "natural religion"
of Pope and Addison. It satisfied his gregarious, un-
mystical nature and offered him a welcome relief from
the severity of Calvinism.

In his "thisworldly" stress upon what he called
the “very present business at hand," Burns was
essentially Augustan. He had a practical, common—
sense view of life, and a genuine, unabashed love of
the carnal. Like the Augustans, his main concern as a
writer was with actual peOple and their problems; he
was only mildly introspective. Like most men of his
century, he had a natural dislike for extremes.

The various Augustan elements in Burns meet in his
satire. It is in his satire that Burns is most con—
clusively a part of the mind and temper of the era
that preceded him — and farthest from the climate of

Opinion that is Romanticism.

 

 

 

 

 

I
to the
who pu‘
partict
includ:
A. J. 1
includ
Arnold
thanks
encour

for me

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I should like to acknowledge my indebtedness
to the Graduate Faculty of the Department of English,
who put me through the doctoral program. In
particular, I am obligated to the Guidance Cemmittee,
including Professors Claude M. Newlin and
A. J. M. Smith, and to the Oral Examination Committee,
including Professors Newlin, Robert J. Geist,
Arnold Williams, and John A. Yunck. My special
thanks go to Professor Carson C. Hamilton, whose
encouragement and constant patience made it possible

for me to complete my thesis.

 

. . 4-.-..." _-.....

 

 

 

A 4?", , 37!,Tt ,—

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction Page

Chapter I

II

III

BURNS'S FEELING OF BELONGING TO
THE AUGUSTAN TRADITION
A. His Borrowing From Neo-Classical
Sources
B. His Voluntary Appreciation of
the Enlightenment
C. His Lack of Artistic Loneliness
BURNS‘S ADHERENCE TO NED-CLASSICAL
ARTISTIC PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES
A. His Reliance on Commonplace
Themes
B. His Preference for Proved
Rhythms and Forms
C. His Simple Diction
D. His Controlled Imagery
E. His Liking for Proverbial
Observations and Truisms
F. His Clarity and Readability
BURNS'S RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES
A. His Attacks on Ecclesiastical
Tyranny
B. His Acceptance of A Natural

Religion

 

l6

25

28

33

43

51

59

73

 

 

 

VI

Conclusi

 

C. His Antipathy to Metaphysical
Complications
D. His Half Skeptical Faith In
Immortality
IV BURNS'S EMPHASIS UPON THIS WORLD
A. His Concern With The Actual
B. His Sensuality
C. His Unreflective Nature
V BURNS'S PRIMARY CONCERN WITH MEN
AND WOMEN
VI BURNS'S STRESS UPON REASON AND
COMMON SENSE
VII BURNS'S "COMIC" VIEW OF LIFE

Conclusion

 

81

84

9h

99

107

112

127

135
1&1

 

 

Rob
Romantic
transiti
lived an
eighteen
nineteen

this gen

 

0f histc
closer t
Has born
age of e
Burns dj
When One
princip;
17% (h:
years b.
those a.
the Augl
the 800
he begs
half a

hand, w

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

Robert Burns is generally classified as a Pre-
Romantic, a literary figure who, though admittedly
transitional, was quite close to the Romantics who
lived and wrote during the last decade of the
eighteenth century and the first quarter of the

nineteenth. There seem to be two major reasons for

 

this generalization. The first is simply a matter
of historical and aCademic convenience; Burns lived
closer to Romanticism than to Neo-Classicism. He
was born in 1759 and died in 1796; if one takes the
age of eighteen as the beginning of his maturity,
Burns did his literary work between 1777 and 1796.
When one looks backwards from 1777 to some of the
principal Augustans, he observes that Swift died in
17A5 (his productive period having ceased several
years before), Addison in 1719, Steele in 1729; P0pe,
whose death, it is often assumed brought,to a close
the Augustan era, died in 1744, fifteen years before
the Scotsman's birth and thirty-three years before
he began to write. John Dryden, of course, died over
half a century before Burns was born. On the other

hand, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott all reached

 

 

maturity
creation
then, N:
the clot
The
by which
think R<
he write
persona?
for aril
ie supp
additiox
tetrame‘
differel
°°up1et
this tr:
Th.
18 also
DAttern
at the -
Augusta
influen
though
writer

study d

 

 

ii.

maturity while Burns was still actively engaged in the
creation of poetry. Chronological evidence alone,
then, would seem to demand that Burns be placed in
the close vicinity of Romanticism.

The second reason is one of appearance; the poetry
by which Burns is best known reads as men generally
think Romantic poetry should read. He is a lyricist;
he writes about personal love; he is concerned about
personal and politiCal rights; he often voices contempt
for aristocrats; and he uses the common speech that

is supposedly the medium of Romantic writers. In

 

addition, his favorite metrical device, the iambic
tetrameter line, has a lilt which is noticeably
different from the measured cadence of the heroic
couplet. All these factors constitute one side of
this transitional poet.

The other side, though not as readily apparent,
is also important. The artistic principles, thought
patterns, and environmental influences that lie
at the base of Burns's creativity often show a marked
Augustan bent. These principles, patterns, and
influences have been mentioned in critical works,
though seldom in detail. However, as far as this
writer can determine, there has never been an extended

study devoted solely to the Neo~Classical elements

 

 

in the m
sustains
elements

is the p

f7

111.

i in the mind and art of the Scotsman. To make such a
sustained study — to point out the various Augustan
elements and to show why they may be termed Augustan -

is the purpose of this paper.

 

 

 

 

 

A.H_is_

Rob
Enlighte
voluntar
lay in t
those wh
for crit
stamp, b

were Eng

 

Collecti
from Dry
He was w
both Sco
read in

he Could
time in

read eve
best dai
from 0th
his lett
was his

he refer

I Burns's Feeling of Belonging to the
Augustan Tradition

A. His BorrOWings From Neo-Classical Sources

Robert Burns felt himself to be part of the
Enlightenment; this feeling Was the result both of
voluntary and involuntary factors. The involuntary
lay in the fact that his reading, and the reading of
those who influenced him and upon whom he depended
for critical appraisals, was largely of a Neo-Classical
stamp, both in style and content. His school books
were English, and the anthology among these - Masson's
Collection of Prose and Verse - contained selections
from Dryden, Addison, Thomson, Gray, and Shenstone.

He was well versed in eighteenth century literature,
both Scottish and English; he Was reasonably well

read in the philosophy that produced Neo-Classicism;

he could discuss the political developments of the

time in the light of past events and policies; and he
read every newspaper available and subscribed to the
best dailies of London and Edinburgh. The quotations
from other writers, distributed liberally throughout

his letters, demonstrate how dominantly Neo-Classical

Either in direct quotes or by paraphrase
His

was his reading.

he referred repeatedly to Addison and Pope.

NJ

poetry, 1
In one pc
ofanAw
The exac1
Hits of C
first eta
writes, '
letters ‘
the book
version 1

Th1

 

Neo-Clas
soil he 1
a Part 0
With Whi
Proud of
hide his
to use q
Addison

his Teci
in the P
in Novsm
the Way

he wrote

Wrote a

poetry, too, has its share of Neo-Glassical phrasings.
In one poem, The Cotter's Saturday Night, three authors
of an Augustan bent are either quoted or paraphrased.
The exact identity of 'the collection of letters by
Wits of Queen Anne's reign', which he mentions as his
first standard of art, is not known, but, Ferguson
writes, "from his twice quoting one of Bolingbroke's
letters to Swift, it seems reasonable to infer that
the book at least included selections from that
version of these men's correspondence with Pope...."I
This general culture that Burns received from
Neo—Classical sources Was as much a part of him as the
soil he worked and the air he breathed; it was as much
a part of him as the Scottish vernacular tradition,
with which it at times seemed to clash. Burns was
proud of the Augustan influence and made no effort to
hide his obligation to his creditors. He was careful
to use quotation marks when he borrowed from Pope or
Addison or Locke. In his letters he often informed
his recipients that he was sending them a piece done
in the Pope manner. To Dr. Thomas Blacklock he wrote
in November 1788: "...I have finished one Piece, in
the way of POpe's moral epistles.“2 "I very lately,“
he wrote at another time, "to wit, since harvest began,

wrote a poem, not in imitation, but in the manner of

',l
H

 

Pwysx
taken no
trying t
pointing
mmmn
refer to
'It is t
study of
his unde
this asp
perhaps
The
admitted
Permissi
Past (ir
a°Quireé
seemed 1
the sub;
used bei
is one x
this Dd]

Suthe‘jlz

 

POpe's Moral Epistles."3 He loved to use heroic couplets,
taken mostly from Pope, to reenforce some point he was
trying to put across to his correspondents. After
pointing out that the Scottish literary tradition was
responsible for much in the gummman's writing that we
refer to as distinctive, David Daiches comments:
"It is true that Burns Was indebted to his careful
study of English poetry and English songs for much of
his understanding of the craft of verse making, and
this aspect of his debt to English literature is
perhaps too often ignored.“4 (
The Pope influence Burns freely, even proudly,
admitted. The attitude, that it was not only
permissible but desirable to utilize the work of the
past (in Burns's case, the immediate past) Burns
acquired from his reading of Nee-Classical prose. He
seemed to accept the general Augustan view that all
the subjects worthwhile for artistic purposes had been
used before, and that therefore the successful writer
is one who seeks new ways of being old. In analyzing
this particular eighteenth century point of view,
Sutherland writes;
The eighteenth-century reader was
well aware that some second-rate
writers were mere plagiaries; but

there was no widespread feeling

 

 

Lt.

against imitation, no tendency to
point scornfully at some passage
and say, 'This is simply lifted
from Dryden', or 'He got that

from The Rape of the Lock'. On

the contrary, so long as the poet
passed Pope's test and repaid with
something of his own, his imitations
were counted as poetical assets.
The poet himself rarely showed any
anxiety to conceal his poetical
borrowings, and indeed was often at
some pains to point them out to the
reader. In the Preface to his
Annus Mirabilis Dryden not only
acknowledges but even boasts of his
debt to Virgil:

I have followed him every-
where, I know not with what
success, but I am sure with
diligence enough; my images
are many of them cOpied from
him, and the rest are imitations
of him. My expressions also

are as near as the idioms of

 

 

T.

It s
itself is
the poets
of source
century.
least tht
it may 0
usually
knows.
limitati
gladly.
rations]
for the
unclimbE
Concept-,1
its une:
futilel;
how oft

refuges

the two languages would
admit of in translation.

This is as much as to say: |I don't

know What you will think of my poem,

but I can guarantee that it is

made out of good, sound materials....'5

It must be recognized, however, that borrowing in

itself is not peculiar to any period or literary group;
the poets of the Romantic Revival borrowed from a host
of sources, and not a small amount from the eighteenth
century. Yet the Romantic spirit has about it at
least the desire to be original; it may admit its debts,
it may confess privately that in actuality the writer
usually does write about that which everyone already
knows. But it accepts grudgingly many of the
limitations that writers of an Augustan era accept
gladly. The Romantic spirit (no matter how much its
rational self argues) can never completely stop looking
for the undiscovered country, the buried treasure, the
unclimbed mountain; even While it is using established
concepts and traditional forms through which to utter
its uncertain feelings, it keeps on searching, however
futilely, for the unique, the transcendent. No matter
how often it is told there are no more firsts, it

refuses to believe. It continues to search because,

 

449—7‘ AiAg—i A

 

in the la
itself.
For
search it
critics a
re-examix

found.
B. as;

Bob
into whi
in some
critical
success
charters
egotism
"a most
meter f
natural
193mm
Artisti
Century
in Pegs
Britain

‘0‘” Au

in the last analysis, its primary subject is the search
itself.

For a writer like Burns, on the other hand, the
search itself offered little inspiration; like the
critics and writers of the Augustan age, he was busy
re-examining and re-expressing what had been already

found.

B. His Voluntary Appreciation of the Enlightenment

Robert Burns willingly belonged to the tradition
into which circumstances had placed him; a revolutionary
in some things, he Was a conservative in cultural and
critical matters. When Mrs. Dunlop expressed fears that
success might turn his head and send him off on un-
chartered paths, he reassured her, pointing out that
egotism Was impossible to a young poet Who lived in
"a most enlightened, informed age and nation, when
poetry is and has been the study of men of the first
natural genius, aided with all the powers of polite
learning, polite books, and polite company.“6
Artistically, Burns felt ‘at home' in the eighteenth
century. In a letter to the Edinburgh Evening Courant,
in regard to what he considered the stupidity of
Britain's political policies at the time, he spoke of

“our Augustan age of liberality and refinement, while

 

 

we seem a
and libel
against 1
verted ti
was made

P0133.

Co His

—_

The
poetry,
would in
loneline
conscior
who seld
was est}
but to -
listens
Shared‘
perhaps
”its of
undergt
family.
shaping

Drastic

 

we seem so Justly sensible and jealous of our rights
and liberties, and animated with such indignation
against the very memory of those who would have sub-
verted them...7 This reference to 'our Augustan age'

was made in 1788, two generations after the death of

Pope.

6. His Lack of Artistic Loneliness

The absence in Burns of any effort to justify his
poetry, either to his critics or to his general audience,
would indicate that he was not plagued by artistic
loneliness. This comparative freedom from creative self-
consciousness placed him in the camp of the Augustans
who seldom seem to have doubted that what they thought
was esthetically acceptable, not only to themselves
but to their relatively large audience of readers and
listeners. "The identity of outlook and interests
shared by the governing class and intelligensia is,
perhaps, the most striking aspect of the age....The
Wits of both sides...spoke to and for a society that
understood them and their language. It was all in the
family."8 James Sutherland has connected this common

sharing of cultural likes and dislikes with the wide

practice of an admiration for good conversation:

 

 

 

For a prOper understanding of the
eighteenth century we should never
forget the value then placed upon
good conversation. This was the
most universal of all the arts,
cultiVated by all but the most
boorish. The writers are never
tired of discussing it. Steele
gives much of his space in Tatlers,
Spectators and Guardians to eXplain-
ing the nature and significance of
polite conversation; Swift satirizes
conversational cliches; Fielding
writes a long essay and Cowper a
long poem on conversation; Johnson
deals with it in the Rambler and
practises it continually, while Boswell
and others record it; Jane Austen
counts it among the essential
qualifications of a hero and heroine.
Whatever the Englishman may have been
in the seventeenth century or Was to
become in the nineteenth and twentieth,

there can be no question that in the

 

 

 

 

 

eighteenth century he Was a person
of genuinely sociable habits; and
the high value placed upon the art
of polite conversation is the
clearest indication of it. As he
became more and more urban, the
Englishman grew a little more urbane.
'We polish one another', Shaftesbury
had noticed in 1709, 'and rub off our
corners and rough sides by a sort

of amicable collision.‘

The art of polite conversation,
then, was the special grace of the
lady and gentleman; it depended upon
the finest qualities of intelligence
and character. Restraint, propriety,
an absence of emphasis, consideration
for others and the desire to give
them pleasure, a willingness to sub-
ordinate what is merely personal
or private or a metter of 'self—
eXpression‘ in favour of what is
generally interesting and universally
intelligible in polite society, a

sense of preportion, the avoidance of

 

 

 

 

10.

mere display, the conscious
imitation of the best models
(in this case the conversation
of the fine lady and the fine
gentleman) ~ these are some of
the qualities of good conversa-
tion as the eighteenth century
understood and practised it.
They are also the qualities of
the best eighteenth—century
architecture, and they are
everywhere present in its most
characteristic prose. They are
also, to a remarkable extent,

the qualities of its most
characteristic poetry. The poetry
of that century, however remote
its diction may sometimes be from
the idiom of contemporary speech,
has at least this in common with
conversation that it is consciously
addressed to someone else. The
eighteenth-century poet is addressing
the reader in a variety of ways, and

with different ends in View, but

 

 

A somewhat
writer and

following:

 

 

he is not murmuring to himself
alone. Poetry was to him, like

good conversation, a social

 

activity; it exacted from him a
consideration for the reader and
a corresponding restraint upon
himself.9
A somewhat different attitude, both on the part of the
writer and the audience, existed in the period .
following:
Writers now ceased to speak on ‘ /
behalf of a whole community or even 5
be intelligible to all their ~‘ 1
readers. They seem rather to ”
have spoken for particular elements,
for certain political or philos0phical
ideas, often only for themselves
and their friends. The sense of
widely shared purpose, of belonging
to an ordered and comprehensive
community, had been lost, and
literature had become sectarian....
Running through all is the assertion
that man is no longer at home in

the society he has shaped. The

 

 

 

 

Rober'
ready made
edition of
selections
worked, an
need, whioi
which coul
carried 0v
Portable,
fight for
less recep
been Puzzl
Reynolds);
Without fe
feeling of

POStr
for the an

plant thei

12.

figure of man in society is

replaced by that of man over

against a society that has

discarded him or that he has

abandoned. The commonest

characters in poetry are

solitaries.:LO

Robert Burns, like the Augustans before him, had a
ready made audience; long before he published his first
edition of poems, he had distributed many of the
selections throughout the area in which he lived and
worked, and they had been well received. The genuine
need, which the Augustan writers catered to, for poetry
which could be read and discussed in social groups
carried OVer to Burns's time. Burns's poetry is
portable, as is Pope's. Burns never felt he had to
fight for a hearing, as have poets who wrote in eras
less receptive to artistic production. He would have
been puzzled by Keat's angry retort (in a letter to
Reynolds): "The Public; a thing I cannot address
Without feelings of hostility....I have not the slightest
feeling of humility towards the public.“11
Poetry held for Burns the same position as it did

for the ancients, who were sure that they could not

plant their crops, go to sea, make their gods hear them,

 

 

 

 

get well if
without poe‘
were compost
be distribu‘
community.

Burns or f0:
for the min
and being a
0f society -
The abrupt

in society

never reali
a time whic
or art. Sh
thWSht of

effort of a
“’h0 lived a
currents of
become more
it is Seldc
man and anc
is DEVer re
rarely 1361‘s
with the re

two arti Ste

13.

get well if they were sick, or fight their enemies
without poetry. Many of Burns's most papular poems
were composed to be read at social gatherings, or to
be distributed for the amusement and interest of the
community. The term 'literary man' did not have for
Burns or for his age the exclusive connotation it had
for the nineteenth century. Being a 'literary man'
and being a normal, well read, keenly obserVant member
of society were to the Scotsman virtually synonymous.
The abrupt separation of the two, which the changes
in society forced upon many artists after 1800, was
never reality for him. Unlike Shelley, Burns lived in
a time which still understood the nature and function
of art. Shelley was forced to live in an era which
thought of poetry as a product not of the desire and
effort of a whole people, but of lonely men of genius
who lived apart from rather than in the familiar
currents of everyday life; this caused his writing to
become more and more personal and removed; the bulk of
it is seldom concerned with the relations between one
man and another. Burns's writing, on the other hand,
is never removed, and, in the Shelleyan sense, it is
rarely personal; the large majority of it is concerned
with the relations between men. When one looks at these

two artists after almost a century and a half, he notes

 

 

 

 

in them con
basic diffs
artist. Th
or apprecia
usually for
and literar
separates h
other 'indi
The Scotsma
poor copy 1‘
and his ind
01‘ dazzles;
Bible, he ‘,
amusements.
against a 5
did not con
Streak of i
Classmate
Obscurities
would haVe
(but with e
to improve:
society as
Profit 13:01

refinement,

 

 

14.

in them contrasting traits which emphasize some of the
basic differences between the Romantic and Classical
artist. The Englishman is more admired than understood
or appreciated; his ideas and techniques are studied,
usually for professional reasons, by the psychologist
and literary specialist; and the individualism which
separates him certainly from average men, and even from
other 'individualistic' authors, is forever stressed.
The Scotsman, on the other hand, provides relatively
poor copy for the psychologist and literary specialist,
and his individualism is not the kind that bewilders

or dazzles; a whole people feel that, along with the
Bible, he voices their hopes, fears, prejudices, and
amusements. Shelley wrote as he did because he rebelled
against a society which he did not comprehend and which
did not comprehend him. Burns, too, had within him a
streak of the rebel, as did, for that matter, the Neo-
Classicists themselves; they rebelled against Metaphysical
obscurities, in both form and ideas. However, they
would have changed the word to something less explosive
(but with essentially the same meaning) such as 'desire
to improve'. But their rebellion Was not against
society as such, but against the persons who did not
profit from that society's offerings of liberality and

refinement. Shelley was dissatisfied with the structure

 

 

itself. T
why Shells
If Burns h
artist, vi
would have
never hesi
opinions.

strong pm
(common at

belonging

 

15.

 

itself. The distinction is important in understanding
why Shelley was a lonely writer, while Burns was not.
If Burns had ever felt himself to be a struggling
artist, with few friends and fewer appreciators, he
would have said so somewhere in his letters, for he
never hesitated to express Openly his emotions and
opinions. The fact that he did not complain is

strong proof that he possessed that confidence

(common among classical authors) which comes from

belonging to a settled, self—assured artistic climate.

 

 

 

11g

 

Orig.
something
or novel,
art. "He
strength
He chose,
which are
person.
was once

which he

16. i

i

II Burns‘s Adherence to Nee-Classical Critical

 

Principles and Practices

 

A. His Reliance U on Common lace Themes
Originality, "the ability to create or make
something new; inventiveness; the quality of being new

or novel,"12

was not an important feature in Burns's
art. "He did not,“ William Minto writes, "waste his
strength in searching for new types or strange topics."13
He chose, as themes for his poems, ideas and concepts
which are comprehensible to any average, literate
person. In thus avoiding the strange and unusual he
was once more following the lead of the century in
which he lived and wrote:
One of the clearest statements
of the eighteenth century's attitude
to originality is to be found in
the Spectator, 20 December 1711,
where Addison is paraphrasing some
observations by Boileau:
Wit and fine writing

doth not consist so much in

advancing things that are

new, as in giving things

that are known an agreeable

turn. It is impossible for

us, who live in the latter

 

 

17.

 

ages of the world, to make
observations in criticism,
morality, or in any art or
science, which have not been
touched upon by others....

Originality is not entirely ruled out

by Addison, but it can be shown only

in the treatment of the material.

Has it ever been remarked how close

Addison's last words came to the .

better-known passage in Biographia

Literaria where Coleridge is dis-

cussing 'the two cardinal points of

poetry, the power of exciting the

sympathy of the reader by a faithful

adherence to the truth of nature, and

the power of giving the interest of

novelty by the modifying colours of

the imagination'? To illustrate the

possibility of combining both,

Coleridge refers his reader to 'the

sudden charm which accidents of

light and shade, which moonlight or

sunlight, diffuse over a known and

familiar landscape'. This is not

 

 

Unique to;
Blake, the
ual beaut5
None of m
marginal g
to attach
his SPOtes
the Commor
in its out
loVe he SI
a particu]
emotional
another 86
feeling is

 

18.

very different from Addison's 'more
uncommon lights'. But there is, of
course, a difference: Addison is
thinking mainly in terms of a new
treatment of the old thoughts or
human situations, and Coleridge is
thinking of a new vision, an entirely
new experience, of those permanent
'truths of nature'.1u
Unique topics, like the highly personalized mysticism of
Blake, the beauty that was truth to Keats, the intellect-
ual beauty of Shelley-—these are not found in Burns.

None of his poems, not even Tam O'Shanter, needs the
marginal aids-to-the-reader which Coleridge felt he had
to attach to the gimp of the Angggnt Maringp. Even in
his grotesque moments, Burns did not lose contact with
the commonplace; and the absurdities, taking his work

in its entirety, were very much in the minority. The
love he spoke of in A Red, Red Rose, Highland Mary,

The Bonny Wee Thing, and Mary Morison was in a sense

 

a particular love; it was the result of a given
emotional urge at a specific time and place. But in
another sense it was not particular, for within the
feeling is the universal that is familiar to all men.

Burns's love, whether illicit or married love (and he

J1

 

 

felt both
as Byron 1
love Was r
with love

an older 11

19.

felt both sincerely) Was never an unusual love, such
as Byron felt for his sister. In a Way much of Burns's
love Was not personal at all; he Was often in love
with love as a young boy loves his teacher, or a girl
an older man. Fairchild Writes:
He was sufficiently a man of the
eighteenth century to believe that
“poems" were written to satirize
persons or institutions, to
celebrate an occasion or to derive a
concept from some fragment of
experience. "Songs," however, were
almost entirely non-instrumental.
Their usual purpose was to embody in
words the emotional suggestiveness of
a tune. The themes and materials of
his song-lyrics are often related to
his earlier environment, but they
are remote from the disillusionment
of Edinburgh and the drudgery of
Ellisland and Dumfries. Even when
written in the first person most of
the songs are completely objective,
and even those which respond to

personal circumstances derive a kind

 

 

4WT““t—rr.n ‘www

 

Burns's 1y]
with the g
proclaimed
the great :
feeling on
mind funct
highly per
beauty,‘ w
Within the
than town
for mutual
and prech
necessarij
poetry as
these ver-
and Thyme
poems eSp
excelled

Swift has
SineWy te
WI"iter 11

at times.

 

of impersonality from being merged

with a tradition and set to some old

reel or strathspey or coronaoh.15
Burns's lyricism voiced What its author felt in common
with the general run of humanity; Blake's lyricism
proclaimed what Blake felt apart from other men, for
the great mass of men are incapable of thinking and
feeling on the level at which the mystic or visionary
mind functions. Shelley, in writing of that vague and
highly personal concept, which he named 'intellectual
beauty,‘ was expressing, as it were, the particular
within the particular. He was moving away from, rather
than toward, the basic simplifications which men require
for mutual understanding. "The lyrical faculty is rare
and precious, "comments R. M. Robertson, “but it does not
necessarily imply a powerful understanding, and Burns‘s
poetry as a Whole does imply this....The style of
these vernacular poems of 'rhymed sense, rhymed eloquence,
and rhymed pathos' is excellent in its kind, the satirical
poems especially possessing a pith and pungency not
excelled by Butler, Swift, POpe, or Dryden....Not since
Swift has there been written satiriCal verse of such

sinewy terseness and idiomatic energy."16 A Romantic

Writer like Wordsworth will deal with commonplace tepics

at times——witness the Lucy poems. But his major

production
property 0
immediate
and unphil
to Wordswc
Bmms
shared wit

Purposes.

In the San
could not
and Still
flowers, c

0 &
Wm

 

 

21.

productions view life in a way that is not the common I
property of most of mankind. The stimulus of the

immediate occasion, all important to Burns's literal I
and unphilosophical mind, was of little poetic value
to Wordsworth.

Burns assumed that the commonplace experiences he
shared with his readers were adequate for artistic
purposes. In reference to originality he wrote:

...criginality is a cOpy feature,

in Composition, & in a multiplicity

 

of efforts in the same style dis—

appears altogether. --For these

three thousand years, we, poetic

folks, have been describing the

Spring, for instance; & as the

Spring continues the same, there

must soon be a sameness in the

imagery, & c. of these rhyming

folks. 17
In the same letter Burns told of accepting a bet that he
could not write an ode to spring on an original plan
and still retain the traditional verdant field, budding
flowers, crystal streams, and melodious groves. The
Ode to Spring that resulted from this challenge is a
ribald burlesque whose theme is illicit lovemaking in

 

 

 

the countri
case in Bu‘
Burns was

idea and 0‘
times befo
the human

not novel.

character,

This
time and c

reader 001

 

22.

the country. Yet behind the ribaldry, as was often the
case in Burns, there was a serious intent. By indirection
Burns Was saying that he assumed that virtually every
idea and object suitable for art had been used many
times before the modern artist got to it. To Burns
the human Spectacle was intensely interesting, but
not novel. Referring to his favorite Biblical
character, Solomon, he wrote:

...it is, indeed, surprising what a

sameness has ever been in human

nature. The broken, but strongly

characterising hints, that the

royal author gives of the manners

of the court of Jerusalem and

country of Israel are, in their

great outlines, the same pictures

that London and England, Versailles

and France, exhibit some three

thousand years later. The loves in

the"Song of Songs" are all in the

spirit of Lady M. W. Montagu, or

Madame Ninon de l'Enclos.l8

This artistic emphasis on what has been tested by

time and on topics which the writer shares with his

reader coincides in Burns with his pride in belonging

 

 

 

 

to the Aug
be clear 1
follows ne

expressed

 

 

(1.6., he
of the tru
claim diet
was thougi
classical
gives ind:
body of c<
with his 5
have for 1
truths, ti
gaVe in“.
and ideal:
In a Simii
Wm
accepted E
is about 1
Which is (
work. No‘

W

in the Ti]

 

 

 

23.

to the Augustan tradition and his automatic effort to
be clear and readable to a receptive audience. For it
follows necessarily that if the ideas and emotions
expressed are commonplace and the reader is responsive
(i.e., he does not have to be convinced of the Value
of the truths the artist is assuming) the creator can
claim distinction only in the craftsmanship——“what oft
Was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." If a
classical artist is one who finds unity in variety, who
gives individual expression, the beauty of form, to a
body of common sentiments and thoughts which he shares
with his audience, and if these thoughts and views

have for him and his audience the validity of universal
truths, then Burns has classical tendencies. For Burns
gave individual expression to a body of common thoughts
and ideals which he shared with the people of Scotland.
In a similar manner, Alexander POpe (in the Essay on

Criticism) gave expression for his time to a commonly

 

accepted group of critical canons and principles. There
is about many of Burns's poems that 'charm of familiarityl
which is one of the cardinal features of a classical
work. Not one of the millions who have read and sung
Auld Lang Syne could honestly say that he found, even

in the first reading or singing, anything new or

 

 

startling
found. Th
Hailie, ar
the 'charm

Much
Ode to a N
Ode to the
quality; 1
surroundir
poetry not
they have
readings.
more than
haVe met 1
but not tc

Edwin Mui:

Wu .
«.18 lg a]

 

 

startling in the verses. There is nothing unusual to be
found. The Cotter and his family, James Smith, poor
Mailie, and John Anderson have for almost any reader
the 'charm of familiarity'.
Much of the charm of Romantic poems like Kubla Khan,

Ode to a N1 htin ale, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and
Ode to the West Wind is derived from just the opposite
quality; they intrigue us, take us away from our L
surroundings, and weave a spell. They succeed as _ )
poetry not because of their simplicity but because J
they have as many meanings as there are readers and
readings. Few poems of Burns challenge us to find
more than one interpretation. Since his death men
have met in clubs and societies to celebrate his work,
but not to try to understand it. The Burns cult,
Edwin Muir writes:

...is a grateful recognition that

here is a poet...who has such insight

into ordinary thoughts and feelings

that he can catch them and give them

poetic shape, as those who merely

think or feel them cannot. This

is Burns's supreme art. It seems
to be simple.19

This is also, it might be added, the supreme art of Dryden,

 

 

Pope, and 5
poems the 1
any poem-~l
picture of
it embody :
general tr‘
an immedia
that the S
that Iwith
fears for
material 1
Tellers.
the reform
were enoug
enough f0:
however, 1
Case, he E

wanted mos

B‘Hhr
Burn
eXtended
no Origin
to invent

experimen

 

25.

Pope, and Swift. If one puts to the majority of Burns's
poems the critical questions the Neo-Classioists asked of
any poem—-Does it present in clear language a Just
picture of a normal, universal aspect of life? Does

it embody in images(fi?preoise accuracy a significant "
general truth? Are its sentiments such as would prompt

'20 --he finds

an immediate response in every normal man?
that the Scotsman measures up well. It has been said
that "with some misgivings about the present but few

fears for the future, Augustan writers found appropriate

 

material in the contemplation of the life of their
fellows. Man in society, his conduct and aspirations,
the reform of morals, and the refinement of manners
were enough.“21 Such fundamentals were never quite
enough for the Romantic mind and temper; for Burns,
hoWever, they seem to have been sufficient. In any
ease, he gave no evidence in his writings that he

wanted more.

B. His Preference for Proved Rhythms and Forms

Burns's preference for the tried and established
extended to his choice of poetic forms. Since he had
no original concepts to put forth, he felt no pressure
to invent new methods of expression. He rarely

experimented with forms for the pleasure of experimentation.

 

 

 

0n the wh
predecess
six line
Scottish
use forms
suited to
to be inv
admired h
wrote in
irregular
Odes are
know, but
Burns was
meter has
have two
great maj
iambic.
and finis
0‘31 mind,
of vePse
varied in
Ships the
Cannot be
Starts W1

inn°Vatic

 

On the whole, he borrowed his forms from his Scottish '\
predecessors. The most famous of his stanzas, the

six line stave built on two rhymes, he took from the
Scottish vernacular poets. At times he attempted to
use forms, the Spenserian, e.g., which were not really
suited to him; he used them not through any desire

to be inventive, but because other poets whom he

admired had succeeded with them. "Inclosed," he once

 

wrote in a letter, "you have my first attempt in that
irregular kind of measure in which many of our finest
Odes are wrote. How far I have succeeded, I don't
know, but I shall be happy to have your Opinion...'.'22
Burns was a follower, not a pioneer, in form. His
meter has little variety; his poetic feet usually
have two beats and are either iambic or trochaic; the
great majority of his poems are written in the traditional
iambic. Feeling himself a part of the confident clarity
and finished correctness of a period which knew its

own mind, Burns had no need for those complex rhythms

of verse and prose which become increasingly subtle and
varied in response to the intricate ideas and relation—
ships they must express. In his approach to form, Burns
cannot be characterized as the 'born classicist', who
starts with form, tolerates nothing untried, and considers

innovations as the sign of art's decline. Such inflexi-

 

 

bility doe
presumed 1
the other
who begin:
upon, move
he did at
Romantic 1
once at ti
the Neo-cj
seemity.
and politf
on the st;
satisfact:
Probably 1

Horace: S a

27.

bility does not seem compatible with a poet who seldom
presumed to analyze the creation of others. But, on
the other hand, Burns was even less the 'born Romanticist',
who begins with new matter and welcomes,even insists
upon, novel forms and hazardous techniques. Living as
he did at a time when the first rumblings of the
Romantic revolt could be heard, Burns looked more than
once at the unplowed fields lying beyond the fences which
the Neo—Classicists had erected for their comfort and
security. But the new crops he sought were economic
and political; artistiCally, he was content to depend
on the standard yields which the Augustans had found
satisfactory as a source of peace and contentment. Burns
probably never read Ars Poetica, but he followed well
Horace's advice to poets:
It is hard to treat a hachneyed

theme with originality, and you

act more wisely by dramatizing the

Iliad than by introducing a subject

unknown and hitherto unsung. I

shall aim a poem so deftly fashioned

out of familiar matter that anybody

might hOpe to emulate the feat, yet

for all his efforts sweat and labor

 

 

 

 

 

Go H18 Si

 

In hi
simplicit:
intellect!
in the po¢
Shelley,
demand hi
being com
himself 0
able to o
assurance
Climate p
ease thei
and Whose
1"Gilliam up
1”malts I
Subtle pg
hand, She
ObScure c
is Often

 

in Vain. Such is the power of order
and arrangement; such the charm that

23

waits upon common things.

0. His Simple Diction

In his use of words Burns exhibited again that basic
simplicity that characterized his religious view and his
intellectual outlook in general. His vocabulary, both
in the poems and letters, was limited beside those of
Shelley, or Wordsworth. It could afford to be, for the
demand his ideas put upon it was relatively light. Not
being compelled, as are solitary poets, to sing only to
himself of things which he alone could conceive, he was
able to consider language more objectively; the self-
assurance he received from writing in a settled artistic
climate permitted him to be one of those poets who can
ease their minds among the common thoughts of mankind,
and whose diction, as a result of this contentment, can
remain uncomplicated, at times even elemental. “Burns”,
remarks David Daiches, "though a craftsmanlike and often
subtle poet, is never a difficult one.“2u On the other
hand, Shelley, whose highly subjective nature and lofty,
obscure objectives placed a heavy demandon his language,
is often difficult; at his best he seems to sing to an

audience of angels and to the mountains, winds, and

 

 

 

clouds, a
men who r
Herbert J
Classical

that the

The
clouds g n

29.

clouds, as if they would understand him better than the
men who received his music with laughter and rage.
Herbert J. G. Grierson, in comparing the Romantic and
Classical in regard to the use of language, comments
that the Romantic:

...lacks the confident clarity,

the balanced humanism, the well

proportioned form, the finished

correctness of the literature of

a period which knows its own

mind. But it is shot through

with new strange beauties of

thought and vision, of phrase

and rhythm. Language grows

richer, for words become symbols

not labels, full of color and

suggestion...and the rhythms of

verse and prose grow more varied

and subtle to express subtler

if vaguer currents of thought

and feeling.25

The audience Burns sang for seldom thought of the

clouds and wind, except in a practical way as the sources

of rain and cold; his listeners were interested in the

 

 

 

fields, th
the tavern
currents c
were compc
many of ti:
designed f
corner de‘c
objectives
be simple,
now occupi
has pointe
opinion 01
Style, A<
care and c‘
in the di<
Words, am

Thert
denotatlw
things th;
seldom me;
read; and
Connotati.
Dersmal.
0f the R0:

underdog ‘

30.

fields, the cottage, the county fair, the lodge, and
the tavern. Burns had little need to express “vaguer
currents of thought and feeling." Many of his poems
were composed to be read at social gatherings, just as
many of the writings of the Neo-Classicists were
designed for after-dinner conversation and street—
corner debates. It was inevitable, considering these
objectives, thatthe language of such writers should
be simple, for poetry to their readers held a place

now occupied by the popular magazine. Lytton Strachey

 

has pointed out that Pepe, contrary to the expressed
opinion of some commentators, did not have a noble
style. Actually, observes Strachey, POpe used, with
care and discrimination, all of the plainest words

in the dictionary.26

Burns, too, used all the plainest
words, and used them with care and discrimination.
There is in Burns's choice of words a marked
denotative quality, a reference more to objective
things that to subjective impressions. His words
seldom mean more than they appear to mean when first
read; and when they do mean more, i.e., become more
connotative, the connotation is general rather than
personal. Even when Burns was closest to the Spirit

of the Romantics — in his shrill championing of the

underdog and his patriotic flurries ~ his language

 

 

did not 1
transmit i
reader fo
of meanin
establish
Burns nev
words so
to grasp
and Coler
shorthand
communica
conscious
took upor
able. m
I‘ighteoug
purposeh
them; f0]
Virtuall:
Were Wri'
listening
°°nn0tat;
he desin
rapport .
Augustan

1.9de Of

 

31.

did not lose this down-to-earthness. Burns was able to
transmit his full meaning to his reader because the
reader found in the poet's words the precise shade

of meaning that was intended; a large mass of commonly
established distinctions were recognized by both.

Burns never had that private shorthand which connoted
words so personally that only the writer can be expected
to grasp their fullest meaning. Blake, Keats, Shelley,
and Coleridge (in varying degrees) all had this private
shorthand, and, consequently, they did not always
communicate what they wished to say to others. Burns
consciously sought the established distinctions. He
took upon himself the responsibility of being understand-
able. When he used words of general connotation, like
righteous, love, grace, and salVation, he used them
purposely in the way the reader would normally employ
them; for to him connotative-rapport was a necessity.
Virtually all of his songs and most of his satires

were written to be appreciated at the first reading or
listening; the presence in any of them of many personal
connotations would have spoiled that immediate response
he desired and needed. In striving constantly for this
rapport with his audience, Burns was in the line of the
Augustans, who moved language away from the precarious

ledge of subjective utterance to the safer, though

 

 

 

 

 

sometimes
understar
making fa
and irra1

in Septer

Speaking

QUintam

32.

sometimes less bewitching, ground of collective f
understanding. The Augustan mind distrusted the image-
making faculty and considered it a sign of the obscure
and irrational; a writer writing in Gentlemen's Magazine,
in September 1734, said:
When the Imagination and

Invention are so busy, Reason and

Judgment are seldom allowed time

enough to examine the Justness of

a Sentiment, and the Conclusiveness

 

of Argument....They [many of the poet§7
seem to have studied rather to say
'gigg things than 1353 ones, and have
often shown their Fancy at the
expense of their Understanding, which
is buying Reputation at a very
extraVagant price.27
Speaking of the Augustan connotation of the term imagination,
Quintana writes:
We use imagination in the broad

sense that it commonly bears in

modern criticism, remembering that

Swift's own period scarcely under-

stood this application of the term.

 

 

 

Burns did
sentimen1
ness in l
things, z
everythix
social -

subdued ‘

D~ u
Bur
none of
Romantic
comparis
seem bey
denotati

kind des

 

They spoke rather of enius, talent,

invention, indicating by imagination

the image—making faculty or, when

the implication of creativeness crept

in, the wild fancy of the enthusiast.28
Burns did not always stop to examine the Justness of a
sentiment, and this rashness produced at times a shrill—
ness in his work; but he seldom studied to say fine
things, and his diction is rarely 'fancy.‘ Almost
everything in his environment - both literary and
social - combined to develop in him a simple and

subdued vocabulary.

D. His Use of Controlled Imagery
Burns's imagery, like his language in general, has
none of the brilliance, the illumination for which the
Romantics are admired. It mfldom scars, in symbols and
comparisons so intricate that ideas,are suggested which
seem beyond the reach of any words that have chiefly
denotative qualities. Burns was a singer, but not the
kind described by Peter Butter:
His poetry seems to well out
like the singing of a bird, impetuously,
effortlessly; and, like the bird's

song, there sometimes seems to be

 

 

 

 

Burn:

It cannot

forcing f:

 

little reason why his flow should
cease at one point rather than
another. The rhythmical movement
is delightful, but sometimes we do ~ I i
not feel that we are being taken
anywhere in particular. A notorious
example of this is the Ode Eng
Skylark; some attempt is made to
reach a definite conclusion at the

end, but there are few stanzas

 

which could not be dropped out
without greatly injuring the
whole. His successions of images
are often a number of shots at the
same target rather than hits on one
target after another; but his target
is usually sufficiently remote to
justify a number of shots, and the
effect of the images is cumulative,
as in the Liturgy.29
Burns's imagery rarelychallenges, as does Blake's.
It cannot stand alone as can these lines,
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,

forcing from the reader an admiration for the wording

alone. One can appreciate lines like these,

 

 

even if k
clear ide
when out
its lusts

conventic

there is
the image

trufi of *

 

35-

The One remains, the many change
and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's
shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many—colored
glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
K (Adonais, 11. 460-463)
even if he has not read the whole poem, nor has any
eclear idea of what Shelley is seeking to convey; even
when out of context, the imagery succeeds because of
its luster. On the other hand, when one reads the
conventional imagery of, say, Tam O'Shanter -
But pleasures are like poppies spread;
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white--then melts forever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their
place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm,
there is no such success. Considered by themselves
the images are mediocre, uninspiring. The same is

true of the imagery of Dryden or POpe; removed from

 

 

 

 

the polisl
works, it
elementar:
and compel
love havh
a well-pl:
material ‘
flame, h0j
over agai
poets who
Words in
cOlllperieo
reader, as
of being
haunted u
image-may
in a lag
nor a: d 1
part, I)
denendee
layman In:
metaphor
In
1added 1;

his DOem

 

the polished statements and disciplined unity of their '
works, it seems common-place. Burns‘s imagery is
elementary in content; he took the most common figures
and comparisons--death as a frost, Fancy on the wing,
love having the beauty of a flower and the harmony of
a well—played tune, intangible worth making poor the
material treasure of a miser, emotion as a glow or a

flame, hope gilding the gloom-—and used them over and

over again. The possibility, whichlms intrigued many ‘I

poets who were more interested than the Scotsman Was in
words in themselves, of giving a novel tWist to an old
comparison, and thus both delighting and surprising the
reader,seldom seemed to have concerned Burns. The fear
of being accused of triteness, a dread which has
haunted more than one poet, did not bother him. The
image-making faculty (which the Romantic poets possessed
in a large degree) was not part of his poetical nature,
nor did he, apparently, have any desire to make it a
part. In this he was close to the Augustans, who also
depended upon standard word—pictures (such as even a
layman might use in his daily speech) and shunned
metaphoric brilliance.

in the manner in which he used his imagery Burns
leaned toward his Augustan predecessors. Imagery in

his poems, as in the writing of the Neo-Classicists, has

 

 

 

a subordina‘
through aim
(which are

has been sa
unfigurativ
essential a
imagery son
he believed
the Scotsma
in its natt
this is. 1

these amp]

16: .
‘ “S tl‘ltfi

 

37.

a subordinate function; it reiterates and fortifies
through simple, traditional symbols and comparisons
(which are seldom arresting and rarely dazzling) what
has been said, or is being said, in passionate but
unfigurative language. Imagery in Burns is rarely as
essential as it was, say, to William Blake, who without
imagery could never have adequately given form to what
he believed and experienced. A random sampling of
the Scotsman's stanzas, where the imagery can be seen
in its natural setting, reveals how consistently true
this is. In the Epistle to a YoungiFriend are found
these simple figures:

When ranting round in Pleasure's

ring,

Religion may be blinded;

Or if she gie a random sting,

It may be little minded;

But when on Life we're tempest-

driv'n-~

A conscience but a canker--

A correspondence fix‘d wi' Heav‘n

Is sure a noble anchor.
None of the images can be termed unusual, even different
(though having a correspondence with Heaven is slightly
less trite than the rest). Yet the lines are not dull

and the poet conveys to his reader what he intended;

 

 

 

mutish
by means
when Burr

appeared;

The frie
in mood,
Which th
in theme

are the

36m, t<
feature

its lac}

 

38. j
I

what is here is an intellect appealing to an intellect E
by means of language which is mainly intellectual. Yet
when Burns was filled with feeling, the same simplicity
appeared; in A Bard's Epitaph he wrote:
The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn and wise to
know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow
And softer flame;

But thoughtless follies laid him low,

And stain'd his name.
The friendly glow and softer flame is nearly perfect
in mood, tone, and meaning; yet it is the manner in
which the symbols are used, not their inherent quality
in themselves, that is impressive. Equally passionate
are the autobiographical lines from To A Mountain Daisy:
Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betray'd,
And guileless trust;
Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid
Lo 1' the dust.
Here, too, the manner is the thing. The most impressive
feature of such imagery, of all of Burns's imagery, is

its lack of obvious impressiveness. It stands aside,

 

 

unassumir
wrote, 'e
disputed.

the image

 

or the f

 

 

 

 

39-

unassuming and subdued, for the facts which, Burns once
wrote, "are the chiels that winna ding and downs be
disputed." Its function resembhes the function of
the imagery employed by Pepe in An Esggy on Criticigm:
True ease in writing comes from art,
not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd
to dance.
Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an Echo to the Sense;
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers
flows;
And when loud surges lash the sounding
shoar,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the
torrent roar.
Or the figures employed by Dryden in Astraea Redux:
Such is not Charles his too too active age,
Which govern'd by the wild distemper’d
rage
Of some black Star infecting all the Skies,
Made him at his own cost like Adam wise.

Tremble, ye Nations, who secure before,

 

 

 

 

Laught at those Arms that 'gainst our
selves we bore; ‘

Rouz'd by the lash of his own stubborn
Tail,

Our Lion now will foreign Foes assail.

With.§;ga who the sacred Altar strows?

To all the Sea-Gods Charles an Offering
owes:

A Bull to thee, Portunus, shall be slain,

A Lamb to you the Tempests of the Main:

For those loud Storms that did against
him rore,

Have cast his shipwrack'd Vessel on the
Shore.

Yet as wise Artists mix their Colours so,

That by degrees they from each other go,

Black steals unheeded from the neighb'ring
white

Without offending the well couz'ned sight:

So on us stole our blessed change; while we

Th' effect did feel, but scares the manner
see.

Frosts that constrain the ground, and birth
deny

To Flow'rs, that in its womb expecting lie,

 

u

g
i
f

e
h
HI.

 

Lil.

Do seldom their usurping Pow'r withdraw,

But raging Floods persue their hasty Thaw:

Our Thaw Was mild, the Cold not chas'd
away, i

But lost in kindly heat of lengthned day.

Heav'n would no bargain for its Blessings
drive,

But what we could not pay for, freely give.

The Prince of Peace would, like himself,
confer

A Gift unhOp'd without the price of war.

Yet as he knew his Blessings worth, took

 

care
That we should know it by repeated Pray'r; f
Which storm‘d the Skies and ravish'd

Charles from thence, 5
As Heav'n it self is took by violence.

Booth's forward Valour only serv'd to shew,

 

He durst that duty pay we all did owe:

Th' Attempt was fair; but Heav'ns prefixed
hour

Not come; so like the watchful Travellor,

That by the Moons mistaken light did rise,

Lay down again, and clos'd his weary Eyes.

The figures in these lines have the same unobvious

 

 

unortance
best incorq
and netaph<
casual rea
saying, ca
out, conns
fiiilizi, r
Suggestivf
painting
needing t
follow th
and take
with sub‘
statemen'
exercise
notable
did for
writers
grow no:
1”(31‘6th

bRome

 

#2.

importance as do the symbols in Burns. Burns at his
best incorporated into his verse his elementary similes
and metaphors in such an inconspicuous manner that the
casual reader, though fully aware of what the poet is
saying, can easily overlook them. They seldom stand
out, commanding attention, as do Shelley's in 1343
Skylark, nor do they have the extreme degree of
suggestivity which characterizes much of the word
painting or War or W- Not
needing to employ words suggestively, Burns could
follow the classical principles of balance and control
and take the ordinary, established relationships and
with subtle readjustments freshen and fortify his
statements and implications. The heroic couplet
exercised upon the imagery of Dryden and Pope a

notable muting effect; the influence of Neo—Classicism
did for Burns what the couplet did for the Augustans.
Writers who possess the transforming passion usually

grow more subtle, more figurative as their inspiration
increases; classical Writers, on the other hand,

become plainer. When Shelley and Keats were most

inspired they filled their pages with symbols and

figures; but when Dryden felt the poetic fire most

strongly he became simpler and less figurative. Burns's

Simplicity increased with his inspiration. Some of his

 

 

 

finest v
In As Fc

many the

In the a
figures,
or mood.
the pur}
is void
feature;
borrowe
ideas,

a crest
He used
orderly
he Was

benefit

Bense’

 

finest verses have virtually no obvious imagery at all.

In Ae Fond Kiss there are these lines (considered by

 

many the greatest he wrote);

Had we never lov'd sae kindly,

Had we never lov'd sae blindly,

Never met--or never parted--

We had ne'er been broken hearted...
In the second stanza of Mary Morison there are only two
figures, and neither one is necessary to the meaning
or mood. The similes in John Anderson are chiefly for
the purposes of adornment. Shggls A Winsome Wee Thing
is void of imagery. Such writing reflects the best
features of eighteenth century disciplines. Burns
borrowed his imagery; he found it, as he found his
ideas, in the most familiar places. He was no more
a creator in this than he Was in his forms or beliefs.
He used what he borrowed so as not to disturb the
orderly and logiCal surface of statement. As a result
he was able, as were POpe and Dryden, to obtain the
benefits of metaphor without being, in the Romantic

sense, strikingly metaphoric.

E. His Liking for Proverbial Observations and Truisms
Burns, like all artists, sought the truth of life.
But his kind of truth differed in important ways from

the Romantic conception of the word. The truth one finds

 

 

in most E
of this a
Romantics
though ti
Coleridgs
could no‘
in fact,

a sort 0:
satisfyi
higher r
in degre
Percepti
Absolute
Was dies
sounds y.
both to

thinking
resorts
inadequ,

Th

rationa
realm n

world h

the nor

eQUlVa]

 

in most Romantic poetry is an elusive thing, a light not I 2
of this world. In searching for their truth, the V
Romantics did not look for long in the man-made world,
though they might have hopefully begun there, as .
Coleridge did in France: An Ode. The truth they desired i
could not be comprehended through a factual reality; I
in fact, if one hoped to find this truth, which was
a sort of fixed, final, immutable, intrinsic, perfectly A
satisfying good, he could do so only by searching in a
higher realm which differed from the actual not merely
in degree but in essential nature.30 Blake's mystical
perceptions, Wordsworth's 'visionary gleam', Shelley's
Absolute (the One), Keats' ideal of a perfection that
was disassociated from time or place, and Coleridge's
sounds which send the soul abroad all were efforts
both to grasp and give form to such a truth. Rational
thinking and the use of a denotative diction which
resorted to the proverb, platitude, and statement were
inadequate for such a purpose.

The truth Burns sought, on the other hand, was both
rational and commonplace. He recognized no higher

realm which differed in essential nature from the

world he observed about him. In fact, he rarely used

the word truth at all, preferring the eighteenth century

eQuivalents, prudence, sense, and worth. If he did

 

 

think ab
be perce
common-s
employed
express
Poe
poetry 0
Its purp
‘ this 1if

eighteen

 

think about truth, it Was not of the kind which must
be perceived intuitively; rather it was a sort of
common-sense, practical wisdom. A diction that
employed the proverb and platitude was adequate to
express such wisdom.

Poetry of the Augustan age was on the whole a
poetry of proverb, of statement, and of declaration.
Its purpose Was to instruct the reader in the ways of
' this life. R. K. Root, writing of the didacticism of
eighteenth century art, says:

The word ”didactic” is today
a word of very ill repute; nor is
the word "moralize" in any better
odour. If out of favour everywhere,
these words are particularly
repugnant to most present-day
theories of poetry. Modern critics
would, I suppose, be willing that
we should learn from literature in
the sense that we enlarge the scope
of imaginative experience and sharpen
our perception of beauty; but anything
like a definite precept or a moral is
supposed to be utterly at variance

with the idea of art, and Croce's

 

Burns wr
obserVat
maxims:
aft agle
rank is
a‘ that,
life 67;
instead
making.
"An hon
neyer 1
executi

eXDPess

 

 

46.

doctrine of intuition seems to outlaw

from the realm of poetry any formulation

of truth arrived at by the process of

rational thought.

Whether this limitation of the field

of art be true or false, it is well

to remember that it is entirely a

prohibition of modern times. To any

poet or critic earlier than the

nineteenth century, it would have

seemed a preposterous notion that

poetry may not teach as well as please.31
Burns wrote in accord with such an objective. His moral
observations are usually in the form of proverbs and
maxims: “The best-laid schemes 0' shoe an' men gang
aft agley,“ “Life's cares they are comforts," “The
rank is but the guinea‘ stamp, the man's the gowd for
a' that." Each of these is a general observation on
life expressed in condensed form; economy and simplicity
instead of elaboration and depth are required in its
making. Pope's "To err is human, to forgive, divine,"
"An honest man's the noblest work of God," and "Man
never is, but always to be blest" are similar both in
execution and intent. Neither Pope nor Burns was

expressing what he individually had discovered after

 

 

 

 

 

profound
universe
consoiot
soul. E
and his
human e:
be true,
reader 1
more po‘
Bu
Charact
Of his
his wor
"SOIOmc
may be
Of his
prover}
he assx
sole 3}
the pe;
that a
and th
corres
Wisdom
it, us

time s

 

Lw.

profound searching into the mysteries of life and the i
universe; neither Was calling upon his reader to become i
conscious of the complexity and immensity of the human

soul. Each was merely giving voice to what for him

and his time Was a self-evident reality that universal

human experience and observation had demonstrated to

be true. Each was saying for the reader what the

reader presumably already knew, but saying it with

more polish and finality than that reader could.

Burns's esteem for Solomon, his favorite Biblical

 

character, is one indication of the proverbial nature i
of his mind and art. The Scotsman admired Solomon for
his worldly wisdom; he wrote to Clarinda in 1788:
"Solomon's knowledge of the world is very great. He

may be looked upon as the ‘Spectator' or 'Adventurer'

of his day."32 Burns, of course, was talking of the
proverbial wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs, and

he assumed, as most laymen did, that Solomon was the

sole author. It was the manner of expression, not

the person, that he looked upon as the 'Spectator' of
that day. Paul, who was also wise in the ways of men
and the world, was not praised in this respect in Burns's
correspondence. The objectives of the Apostle‘s

wisdom, and the symbolic manner in which he uttered

it, may account for this. Paul thought deeply, some—

times mystically, asking of his readers and listeners

 

 

a comple
truth Pa
Burns vs
principf
practic‘
Solomon
penetra
life he
the Dei
more pr
wisdom
to a It
An
proverb
referre
yet his
Colerid
the Ron
compret
of his
ability
SBHera]
Feed fig
aSSume

 

#8.

a complete re-evaluation of ideals, a rebirth; the
truth Paul preached was the light the Romantics sought.
Burns was satisfied on the whole with the ideals and
principles that existed; his stress was upon a better ‘
practice of what already had been established. The

Solomon of legend fits this emphasis; he was neither

penetrating nor lofty; in the latter stages of his

life he displayed a skepticism which was close to

the Deism of the eighteenth century. Proverbs is

 

more prudential than idealistic; its generalized
wisdom and relatively unsymbolic diction is suitable
to a 'thisworldly‘ point of view.

Another indication of Burns‘s preference for the
proverbial is his attitude towards Shakespeare. He
referred frequently in his letters to the dramatist,
yet his references were unlike those of Hazlitt or
Coleridge, or of modern readers and critics. While
the Romantics stood in awe of the Englishman's vast
comprehension, his extreme versatility, and the depth
of his insight, Burns admired Shakespeare for his
ability to summarize in two or three lines some
general fact regarding human motives or actions. He
read Hamlet and Macbeth, and it is reasonable to
assume that he read these plays as thoroughly as he

did everything else he could borrow or buy; yet the

 

 

fascinat
possibil
every ch
intrigue
indicati
Shakespe
insight,
expresee

The
quotatic
views at
Prefers:
concisel
'50 the (
of flamv
warm fa;
then fe
I am th
feeling
friends

At anoi

 

fascinating puzzles in them, the multiplicity of
possibilities and considerations clinging to almost
every character and situation, apparently did not
intrigue him. Certainly, in his lettershe gave no
indication of such a fascination, and if he had admired
Shakespeare because of the dramatist's psychological
insight, it is highly probable that he would have
expressed this admiration.

The way in which Burns in his letters used
quotationsand paraphrases to summarize or verify his
views and observations is a further sign of his
preference, temperamentally and intellectually, for
concise, universally understood truisms. In regard
to the dangers of rapture, he wrote: "People may talk
of flames and rapture as long as they please; and a
warm fancy, with a flow of youthful spirits, may make
them feel something like what they describe: but sure
I am the nobler faculties of the mind, with kindred
feelings of the heart, can only be the foundation of
friendship."33 Then he attempted to sum up his feelings
with a quotation from POpe's Eloisa to Abelard, 11. 91-2:

0 happy state} when souls each other
draw,
When love is liberty, and nature law.

At another time he endeavored to convince Clarinda that

 

 

 

 

 

 

some lin
I0 Glari
me is yo
you woul
censorio

Prologue

0f the E

Then Bu:

W0 11m

 

50.

some lines he had written were not intended to offend.

”0 Clarindel" he exclaimed, ”did you know how dear to

me is your look of kindness, your smile of approbation!

you would not,

either in verse or prose, risque a

censorious remark."34 Then he quoted from Pope's

Prologue to the Satires, l. 283:

Of the Earl of

Curst be the verse, how well
soe'er it flow,

That tends to make one worthy man
my foe!

Glencairn, his patron, Burns wrote:

A Mind like his can never die.-—

Let the Wp. full Squire Hugh Logan,

or Mass James McKindly, go into

their primitive nothing.-—At best

they are but ill-digested lumps

of Chaos....But my noble patron,

eternal as the heroic swell of

Magnanimity, and the generous throb

of Benevolence, shall look on with

princely eye.35

Then Burns borrowed, from Addison's Cato Act V, sc. 1,

 

two lines which sum up all he had said in a paragraph:

 

Unhurt amid the war of elements,
The wrecks of Matter, and the crush of

Worlds.

 

 

 

Robert E
truth w}
life evn
but as '
traditit
a silve:
shinest
most eh
axiomat
couplet

euperio

F~ us
Be
because
ready-m
princip
and bee
he was
effort
poets,
of bec(
like hf
averag(

“the pi

 

 

Robert Burns preferred adroitly phrased truisms to a
truth which was not of this world. His musings on
life evolved not as profound and complicated thought,
but as “a spontaneous explosion of platitude, of that
traditional wisdom typified today by 'every cloud has
a silver lining‘....and 'make hay while the sun
shines'."36 In this he was once again in accord with
most eighteenth century writers, who also thought
axiomatically, and whose preference for the closed
couplet Was due to that verse form's acknowledged

superiority in the framing of statements and aphorisms.

F. His Clarity and Readability

Because he felt he belonged to a settled culture,
because he knew he Was functioning as a poet in a
ready-made tradition which had fixed for him specific
principles of good-taste, balance, and common sense,
and because he had a receptive audience against which
he Was not compelled to battle, Burns made a conscious
effort to be clear and readable. Unlike 'lonely'
poets, he was not forced into that only-alternative
of becoming more and more personal until his expression,
like his ideas, ceased to be comprehensible to an
average reader. "He has," one critic has observed,

"the personal gift of an exceptionally precise, clean

 

 

 

 

style; 1
of under
language
expressi
poetry I
There 1:
best pit
forward]
Pope hat
in fact
been th
In a We
and res
are so

mere mo
Deceasa
8?OUps

depend:
which 8
creator
PTODPie
neithel
Era Sp (
Conseql

the 0r<

 

52.

style; his mind combines the clearness which comes

of understanding, with the easy turn of thought and
language which is the reward of Just and concrete
expressions....The example of English classical
poetry had probably some share in that achievement."37
There is an inevitability in the phrasing of Burns's
best pieces which reflects the simplicity and straight-
forwardness of his outlook on life; both Dryden and
Pope had at times this inevitability. Of the two,

in fact of all Neo—Classicists, Pope seems to have
been the most influential upon the Scotsman's style.
In a way Burns had no excuse to be other than clear
and readable. There are writers whose views of life
are so much more comprehensive than those of which
mere mortals are capable that their expression must
necessarily be in a noble-style; there are concepts-—
groups of ideas with subtle interrelations, each one
depending upon a multiplicity of considerations-~
which are not suitable (whatever the word-skill of the
creator) to a style whose emphasis is upon perfect
prepriety and economy. Burns, however, possessed
neither grandiose views nor involved concepts; his
grasp of life was limited. His success as a writer,
consequently, had to depend upon his talent for saying

the ordinary in an exact manner.

 

 

 

A1<
in Burn:
the com
the frig
which 01
cold, 11
scienti
altogeti
the Neo
has obs

 

53.

Along with this clarity of utterance there was
in Burns a notable correctness. It Was not, however,
the correctness that the twentieth century condemns,
the frigid impeccability, the academic priggishness
which one associates with a pedant; nor was it the
cold, impersonal objectivity (found sometimes in
scientists) that presumes to eliminate feeling
altogether from a problem. Burns was correct in
the Neo—Classical manner. Such correctness, R. K. Root
has observed, did not mean only the absence of fault:

...it was a positive rather than
a negative quality. Word and
phrase must be not only free
from offense but exquisitely
right; the numbers must have
precisely the melody and tone
which shall "seem an Echo to
the sense." There must be
complete truth to "nature"—-

no strained exaggeration, no
vague unreality, perfect sanity,
clarity not only in expression
but in conception. The poetic
fire must burn steadily and
brightly, without smoke or

explosive spluttering.38

 

 

The fir:
Romanth
in partf
consider
was any
corresp
when on‘
to-natu:
general
whom he
to the

civiliz
the Opp
particu
was the
cOurse,
be c138
Consoic

54.

The first part of this definition could apply to the
Romantic period as well. Several of the Romantic poets-— ’
in particular Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Landor——took
considerable trouble to see to it that their phrasing
was exquisitely right and that the meaning and melody
corresponded. The difference, perhaps, develops

when one sets out to determine the meaning of truthv
to-nature. The 'natural' to the Augustan mind
generally meant that which is "congenial to those in

whom human nature is most fully developed, that is,

 

to the educated in the most polite nations of the
civilized world."39 The natural was the representative,
the opposite of the unique or magical; not the
particular but the universal mood or idea or desire

Was the natural one. This sort of correctness, of
course, fits in logically with the artist's need to

be clear and readable because he is attempting
consciously to please a willing audience with whom

he agrees on all the things that matter. Not having
such a motivation, the Romantic writer could often

interpret nature, or the natural, as that which Was

 

most common in his own secret thoughts and yearnings.
Burns did not measure up at all times to these
lofty principles, nor did, for that matter, the Neo—

Classicists themselves. But in the bulk of his work

 

 

 

Mspwi
understc
and to 1
and exag
Septembe
forth, 1
the utmi
praised
critics?
my Cory
Work, 3‘
is admi
Carried
from hi
t0 Derf
twice--
of 1791
conside
writing
he put
through
importa
to mail
Th

have at

55-

 

his poetic fire burned steadily. He seems to have t
understood the eighteenth century meaning of 'correct' i
and to have striven consistently to avoid unrealities
and exaggerations. To William Dunbar he wrote in
September, 1788: "I am determined, from this time
forth, whatever I may write, to do it leisurely & to
the utmost of my powers, correctly."l"O In 1793 he
praised George Thomson, on whom he frequently leaned for
critical aid, for his correctness: "Thank you for

my Copy.-—Never did my eyes behold, in any musical

 

work, such elegance & correctness.-—Your preface, too,
is admirably written."41 The desire for correctness
carried over into Burns's letter writing. It is clear,
from his frequent references to the care he had taken
to perfect himself in the art, and from the fact that
twice-~in the Don MS. of 1787 and the Glenriddell MS.
of l791—-3--he compiled selections of what he himself
considered his best efforts, that he took his letter-
writing seriously; in this as in virtually everything
he put down on paper he was always the conscious artist;
throughout his life he made a rough copy of every

important letter before writing out a finished copy
£2

 

to mail.
Throughout his poetry and letters Burns seemed to

have striven for that sanity, that clarity of conception

 

 

 

that We
his p01
exagge
the st
Justif
someti
sent h

song,

At at

he he

56.

that was part of the Augustan's truth to nature. In
his poetry at times there are evidences of the strained
exaggeration, the exPlosive sputterings that anticipate
the strident Calls for self-realization and self—
Justification one finds in Shelley and Blake, and
sometimes in Byron. But his critical sense usually
sent him in the other direction. Speaking of the
song, Banks of the Dee, he wrote:
The song is well enough, but has
some false imagery in it, for instance--
"And sweetly the nightingale sung
from the tggg."-—In the first place,
the nightingale sings in a low bush,

but never from a tree; & in the

second place, there never was a

nightingale seen, or heard, on the

banks of the Des, or on the banks

of any other river in Scotland.——

Exotic rural imagery is always
comparatively flat."u3
At another time, in defense of the realism of a character
he had pictured in a poem, he wrote:

You will take notice that my
heroine is replying quite at her

ease; & when she talks of "Faithless

 

 

 

There s
whole,
over en

than ti

 

57.

Man“ she gives not the least reason
to believe that she speaks from her
own experience, but merely from
observation of what she has seen
around hem“!+
There was in Burns a strong literalism. Taken as a
whole, his writings reveal a dominance of intellect
over emotions, a preference for the probable rather
than the wonderful. Snyder writes:
To re-read some of these passages

in which Burns described his neighbors

and their world, is to realize again

how close he was to the ordinary run

of humanity. One might almost say

that he wrote as anyone would have

written, only better. One finds

in his descriptions of Nature none

of the lush and exotic sensuousness

of Keats, none of the etherealness

of Shelley, none of the mysticism

of Wordsworth....Burns merely

pictured the world as it appeared

to him and his friends, but pictured

it more accurately, more sympathetically,

more vividly, and more honestly than

 

 

 

Burnsh
inspir:
Such a1

by its

 

58.

any of his friends could possibly

have done.“5
Burns's art, like his personality, needed the immediate
inepiration of spontaneous laughter and natural tears.
Such an art will fail if it cannot be grasped readily

by its recipients.

 

 

to reli
a relig
cerning
So one
source
supern
Religi
religi
his po
centur

critic

W11

 

III Burns's Religious Attitudes

A. His Attacks on Ecclesiastical Tyranny
Robert Burns devoted a large amount of writing
to religious topics, yet he cannot be rightly termed
a religious poet. "...though Burns wrote much con-
cerning religion, he wrote but little religious poetry.
So one may fairly exclude the Supernatural as a primary
source of Burns's poetic inspiration."’+6 But if the
supernatural did not interest him, the natural did.
Religious people, or people who posed as being
religious, were one of his favorite tepics, both in
his poetry and his letters. Like many writers of his
century, both major and minor, he took delight in
criticizing hypocritical clergyman. In the Elggy
on,Willie Nichol'sgflggg he wrote:
Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare
As ever trod on airn;
But now she's floating down the Nith,
And past the mouth 0' Cairn.
Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare,
An' rode thro' thick an' thin;
But now she's floating down the Nith,
And Wanting even the skin.

Peg Nicholson Was a good bay mare,

Hardly
John H‘
Which ‘

 

 

And ance she bore a priest;
But now she's floating down the Nith,
For SolWay fish a feast.
Peg Nicholson Was a good bay mare,
An' the priest he rode her sair;
And much oppress'd and bruis'd she was,
As priest—rid cattle are.
Hardly less strident are the lines entitled To The Rev.
John M'Math. Enclosing a copy of Holy Willie's Prayer,
which the Rev. M'Math had requested, Burns wrote:
While at the stock the shearers cow'r,
To shun the bitter blaudin show'r,
Or in gulravage rinnin scow'r
To pass the time,
To you I dedicate the hour
In idle rhyme.
My music, tir'd wi mony a sonnet
On gown, an' ban', an' douse black bonnet,
Is grown right eerie now she's done it,
Lest they should blame her,
An' rouse their holy thunder on it,
And anathem her.
I own 'tWas rash, an' rather hardy,
That I, a simple, kintra bardie,
Should meddle wi' a pack sae sturdy,

Wha, if they ken me,

 

Can easy, wi' a single wordie,
Lowse h—ll upon me,
But I gae mad at their grimaces,‘
Their sighan, cantan, grace~prood faces,
Their three mile prayers, an' hauf-mile
graces,
Their raxan conscience,
Whase greed, revenge, an' pride disgraces
Waur nor their nonsense....
0 Pope, had I thy satire's darts,
To give the rascals their deserts,
I'd rip their rotten, hollow hearts,
An' tell aloud
Their Jugglin hocusepocus arts
To cheat the crowd....
They take religion in their mouth;
They talk 0' mercy, grace an' truth,
For what? to gie their malice skouth
On some puir Wight,
An' hunt him down, o'er right an' ruth,
To ruin streight.

Such direct attacks resemble the comments on

 

priests and priesthood found in Dryden's Absalom and

Achitophel. Dryden began the satire with: "In pious
times, e'r Priestcraft did begin." Later in the

same poem he wrote:

The cart
could ha

of Burn;

 

 

For Priests of all Religions are the same;
or what so'er descent their Godhead be,
Stock, Stone, or other homely Pedigree,
In his defense his SerVants are as bold,
As if he had been born of beaten gold.
The sarcastic thrust in lines 530—5h0 of the satire
could have applied to almost any fanatical Calvinist
of Burns's day:
Of the true old Enthusiastick Breed:
'Gainst Form and Order they their Pow'r
impl 037;
Nothing to Build and all things to
Destroy.
But far more numerous was the Herd of
such,
Who think too little, and who talk
too much.
These, out of meer instinct, they
knew not why,
Adored their Father's God, and Property.
And, by the same blind Benefit of Fate,

The Devil and the Jebusite did hate:

Born to be sav'd, even in their own
dbspight,
Because they could not help believing

right.

I
I
l
1
1

 

 

In
antipat
a frien

Burns w

In a l
Auld,

 

In his letters Burns gives further evidence of his
antipathy to the 'Enthusiastick Breed.l Discussing with
a friend, Peter Hill, Various people and professions,
Burns wrote (in March 1791):

The Clergy, I pass by - Their
profundity of erudition, & their
liberality of sentiment; their
total Want of Pride, & their
detestation of Hypocrisy, are so
proverbially notorious, as to
place them far, far above either

my Praise or Censure.47
In a letterin Gavin Hamilton, Burns discussed Father
Auld, one of the leaders of the Kirk Session:

I understand you are now in
habits of intimacy with that
Boanerges of Gospel pOWer,

Father Auld; be earnest with

him that he will wrestle in
prayer for you, that you may

see the vanity of vanities in
trusting to, or even practising,
the carnal moral works of charity,
humanity, generosity, and forgive-
ness, things which you practised

so flagrantly, that it was evident

Most vi

on th
Burns

Const

 

6h.

 

you delighted in them, neglecting, 5 !
or perhaps profanely despiging 5
the wholesome doctrine of faith
without works, the only anchor of ‘ j
salvation.Lp8 ‘
Most violent of all is this outburst:
I ever could ill endure those

surly cubs of “chaos and old night"

— those ghostly beasts of prey who ‘:

foul the hallowed ground of Religion

with their nocturnal prowlings;

but if the prosecution which I hear

the Erebean fanatics are projecting

against my learned and truly worthy

friend, Dr. M'Gill, goes on, I shall

keep no measure with the savages,

but fly at them with the faucons of

Ridicule, or run them down with the

bloodhounds of Satire, as lawful

game wherever I start them.49

In all of these attacks there is a consistent stress
on the personal activities of the clergy. Like Dryden,
Burns separated the law from the constituted, or self-

constituted, enforcer of the law. Snyder writes:

Though his own religious belief was
far different from that of his

E E ( l y
1 +0 i k 0 .Tu
«L 4.. T a t O

a T e l a C n.
«T... W D B m s a.

 

 

thoroughly orthodox contemporaries,
it is noteworthy that his satire was
directed not primarily against a
creed which he could not accept for
himself, but rather against the
ignorant or intolerant or hypocritical
professors of that creed. He could
hardly have made his respect for one
phase of the old order more clear
than in the lines which the critics
of that order are inclined to overlook, --
The Solemn League and Covenant
Now brings a smile, now brings
a tear.
But sacred freedom, too, was
theirs;
If thou'rt a slave, indulge
thy sneer.5O
It was in this separation of authority and authori-
tarian that Burns differed from the anti-clerical

Writers of the Romantic Revival. In the Romantic

period the main denouncers of priest-craft were
Blake and Shelley, and the intensity of their attacks
matched at times the most extreme phrasing of the

Scotsman. William Blake‘s, The Garden of Love, shows

an anti-clerical bias:

In A_L

to ecc

 

66.

I went to the Garden of Love, 5
And saw what I never had seen: g
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore: ;
And I saw it was filled with graves, g
And tombstones where flowers should be; . ,
And priests in black gowns were walking
their rounds,
And binding with briars my Joys and desires.
In A Little Boy Lost Blake voices again his opposition
to ecclesiastical domination:
"Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to Thought
A greater than itself to know:
"And, Father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door.“
The Priest sat by and heard the child:
In trembling zeal he seized his hair:
He led him by his little coat,

And all admired the priestly care.

 

Bu
dislike
Philos<
prie st.
in the
thi swo
though

simply

in er:

67.

And standing on the altar high,

"L01 what a fiend is here," said he,
"One who sets reason up for Judge

Of our most holy Mystery."

The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain;
They stripped him of his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain;

And burned him in a holy place,

Where many had been burned before:
The weeping parents wept in vain.

Are such things done on Albion's shore?

But behind Blake's highly figurative expressions of
dislike for religious authoritarians lies a basic
philosophy that goes beyond the individual minister or
priest. Unlike Burns, who could find fault with much
in the actual world but who could still believe that a
thisworldly existence Was essentially worthwhile, Blake
thought the entire man-made system Was wrong - not
simply filled with correctable flaws, but basically
in error.

He was against society ;g_tgtg: its
prisons, churches, money, morals,
fashionable opinions; he did not think
the faults of society stemmed from the

faulty organization of society. To him

 

Blake We
organize

itself:

has

 

 

the only restrictions over man are alWays

in his own mind—-the 'mind forg'd manacles.'"51

Blake Went beyond the official representatives of

organized religion and struck at the very structure

itself:

Similar views can be found 1

Destroy, Blake says, all that binds
man to decayed institutions. But destroy
as well man's obedience to moral precepts
that hinder the full power of his creative
will to assert, to love, and to build.
Desire is never vicious in itself; it is
only turned to vicious ends when driven '
out of its real channel. Restraint in
the name of the moral code is alone evil,
for it distorts man's real nature. It is
a device of the rulers of this world to
keep us chained....Jesus is dear to us
not because he was divine, but because he
Was a rebel against false Law, and the

friend of man's desire. He defied the

Kings and Priests. He Was against punish-

ment. He was the herald of man's Joy,

52

not of his imaginary redemptions.

n Shelley. In his

Essay on Christianity he Writes:

The preachers of the Christian religion

urge the morality of Jesus as being itself

 

 

 

miraculous and stamped with the impression of

divinity. Mohamet advanced the same pretensions l
respecting the composition of the Koran, and,

if we consider the number of his followers,

with greater success. But these gentlemen

condemn themselves, for in their admiration

they prefer the comment to the text. Read 1
the words themselves....The doctrines...are ;
excellent and strike at the root of moral ‘
evil. If acted upon, no religious or

political institution could subsist a

moment. Every man would be his own

magistrate and priest; the change so long

desired would have attained its consummation,

and man exempt from the external evils of

his own choice would be left free to

struggle with the physical evils which

exist in spite of him. But these are the

doctrines which, in another shape, the

most violent asserters of Christianity

denounce as impious and seditious; who
earnest champions for social and

This

are such
political disqualification as they?

alone would be a demonstration of the

falsehood of Christianity, that the religion

so called is the strongest ally and bulWark

 

These
positi
Shells
littlt
Rev.]
by tn
In hi
to Oh
Shell

authc

 

of that system of successful force and 5 i
fraud and of the selfish passions from i
which it has derived its origin and
permanence, against which Jesus Christ
declared the most uncompromising war....
We are called upon to believe in the
divinity of a doctrine the effect of
which has been to establish more firmly
that which it was promulgated to destroy, 1
and that they who invite us to...our
reason with envious priests and tyrannical
princes, whose existence is an everlasting
answer to the pretensions of Christianity.53
These lines reflect a religious attitude close to the
position of Blake. There is little distinction in
Shelley's mind between one clergyman and another,
little Willingness to recognize as Burns did, that a
Rev. M'Math could be as distressed as was the layman
by the intolerance of a Father Auld or a Holy Willie.
In his religious ideas Shelley Was a reformer, dedicated
to changing the entire concept of organized religion.
Shelley essentially was anti—authority-—any kind of
authority. Ellsworth Barnard writes:
Religion as an historical fact Shelley

regarded as largely a series of perversions

and abuses, in which the orthodox faith

 

In anal

Clark V

1303,!

Blake

 

71.

had always either engaged in persecution and i
terrorism on its own account, or been a i
willing instrument in the hands of political

Oppression; and had always been, in any case, i
the most pOWerful factor in the preservation
of social injustice of every kind. As for
ritual and dogma, they had no place in
Shelley's scheme of things. He was intensely
individualistic—-no less than Blake “born

into the church of rebels"-—and he repudiated

 

formalism and authoritarianism of every kind.5)+
In analyzing the core of Shelley's thought and writing,
Clark writes:
We must be guided, Shelley believed,
by the principles of benevolence and Justice,
and these in turn must be directed by those
principles of the human mind; sympathy
and imagination. Sympathy born of the
imagination is the great civilizing
force in social life.55
The pre-Romantic in Burns could have gone along, up
to a point, with some of the sentiments expressed by
Blake and Shelley. Blake's utterance in The Divine Ima e,
And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, and Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell

There God is dwelling too,

 

 

expresse
January
idea of
that ev'
will be
of thej
anso
Kirk Se
Armour
Bu
and gel
was trL
He pro}
emotiox
fellow
modem
Offers
of Cal
and Ju
BuPns
and tk
chh
E
and SE
nothe:

indem

72.

expresses a belief that would have pleased Burns. In
January 1788 he wrote in a letter: ”I hate the very
idea of a controversial divinity; as I firmly believe
that every honest, upright man, of whatever sect,

will be accepted by the deity.“56 The “trembling zeal"
of the priest in A Little Boy Lost would have reminded
Burns of the “enthusiasm" displayed by the men of the
Kirk Session as they publicly rebuked him and Joan
Armour and "burned" his friend, Gavin Hamilton.

But Burns did not feel, as did Blake, that restraint
and self—limitation in themselves were evil (Burns‘s
Epitaph suggests that he felt that Just the opposite
was true), nor did he condemn dogma and ritual per s .
He probably found his greatestcontentment in the
emotionally satisfying ritual and democratic good
fellowship of Masonry, and Masonry‘s benevolism, a
moderate mixture of New Light religion and deism,
offered him welcome relief from the inhuman severity
of Calvinism. Shelley‘s "principles of benevolence
and Justice" would not have been foreign to his outlook;
Burns used the exDression more than once in his letters,
and these principles are reflected strongly in the

concluding stanza of A Man's Agflan for A‘ That.

 

But of that transforming—imagination (which Blake
and Shelley relied upon as the instrument through which
"otherworldliness" is expressed), the imagination that,

independent of demonstrated fact or place or time, leads

 

 

 

 

one d1]
Burns?
believ
reason
in the
imagin
Spirit
charac
sought
0f the
spiri‘
beast
that

perso

B.§

Calvi
"0the
of f1
The:
work
aban
conf
for

C 0111p

one directly to a mystical perception of the absolute,
Burns knew nothing. Such perception, which must l
believe before it can know, which feels rather than
reasons, was alien to his mind and temperament. It is
in the absence of this perception and this kind of
imagination that Burns is farthest from the Romantic
spirit, and closest to the sense of actuality that
characterizes early eighteenth century thought. Burns
sought no cosmic revolution, no complete transformation

of the human personality as the solution to man's

 

spiritual problems. Such ideas would have been incompre-
hensible to him. He could forecast optimistically
that someday men would be brothers, but he had no

personal system worked out to make this come to pass.

B. His Acceptance of A Egtural—Religion

 

 

Being unable to accept the harsh extreme of
Calvinism and lacking the mind and temperament for
"otherworldliness," Burns was faced with the alternatives
of finding some compromise or having no religion at all.
The latter was out of the question, so he tried to
work out for himself a religious creed that would
abandon denominational diaputes and metaphysical
confusions, retain a loving, democratic God, and provide
for the practice of humanitarian principles. The

compromise he arrived at resembled very closely the

 

 

" nature
TI

descril

Backgrt

The r
Sens:
QUE 31

P9115

74.

‘“natural religion“ of the Augustan period.

The composition of "natural religion" has been
described by Basil Willey in The Eighteenth Century
Background:

Natural religion reaches God...through
the moral law within: through Reason as
well as Nature. Intra te qggere Degg;
look for God within thyself. And what
exactly would you find when you looked
within? Not the questionable shapes
revealed by pyscho-analysis, but something
much more reassuring; the laws of God
and Nature inscribed upon the heart, the
fideas of first impression,‘ 'truths of first
inscription,I 'common notions (communes
Natitiae)....From these clear imprints
Lord Herbert of Cherbury had already
formulated his fundamentals of natural
religion: acknowledgment of God‘s existence,
duty towards Him and our neighbor, necessity
for repentance, future state of reWards and
punishments.57
The reason which is natural-revelation was all that any
sensible, reasonable man needed. To the inevitable
Question, can I be really saved in this way?, natural

religion could reply:

 

 

 

There
the ur
the pa
were t
Reasox
and t1
the m.
Under
The d,
were

thong
ortho
tatur
that

aSDeC

‘We want not so much knowledge to
tell us what to do, as Wills to do that
which we may know.I You know perfectly
well what to do; your own nature informs
you. Follow Reason, the God within; look
after your conduct and your creed will
take care of itself. In short, whether
you looked without or within, Nature

(without any supernatural revelation)

 

offered you all that was needful for ‘
salvation.58
There were, to be sure, a few in those times who viewed
the universe with alarm, but virtually all scholars of
the period agree that the great mass of thinking men
were willing to find God's plan in Nature, to exalt
Reason, and to reduce the irrational, the mysterious
and the supernatural. The word 'reduce‘ (rather than
the more extreme 'eliminate‘) is important in the
understanding of the Augustan religious point of view.
The deists, who sought to eliminate divine revelation,
were often treated as moral and social outcasts, even
though the basic differences between them and the
orthodox divines were essentially matters of degree.
Natural-religion was an approach to spiritual problems
that sought to keep all the desirable and fundamental

aspects of Christianity, without letting any one aspect

 

 

domina
extrem
admitt
bar-she

i
that t
figure
Theisn
persor
the (H
he ou‘

views

 

dominate or eliminate the others. It banished both an
extreme God and an extreme Satan, though it must be
admitted that the extreme Satan was ejected on slightly
harsher terms.

The writings of Robert Burns gave ample evidence
that when the Scottish clergy obscured for him the
figure of a loving and humane Christ, leaving only a
Theism that was insufficient for such a warm-hearted
person, he turned (at times almost desperately) to
the compromise of a 'natural religion.‘ In January 1788
he outlined in a letter some of his 'common sense'
views on the nature of God and Heaven:

I feel myself deeply interested in
your good opinion, and will lay before
you the outlines of my belief. He who
is our Author and Preserver, and will
one day be our Judge, must be-—not for
His sake in the Way of duty, but from
the native impulse of our hearts-~the object
of our reverential awe and grateful
adoration. He is almighty and all—bounteous,
we are weak and dependent; hence prayer
and every other sort of devotion. -—"He
is not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to everlasting
life“; consequently it must be in every

one's power to embrace His offer of

 

In a
OppOI
denm

reas

 

 

"everlasting life"; otherwise He could not,
in Justice, condemn those who did not. A
mind pervaded, actuated, and governed by
purity, truth, and charity, though it does

not merit heaven, yet is an absolutely

 

necessary prerequisite, without which
heaven can neither be obtained nor enjoyed;
and, by Divine promise, such a mind shall
never fail of attaining "everlasting life":
Hence the impure, the deceiving, and the
uncharitable exclude themselves from
eternal bliss, by their unfitness for
enjoying it.59
In a letter written in December 1794, he voiced his
opposition to disputes over particular creeds and
denominations and reiterated his faith in a just and
reasonable Providence:
I have nothing to say to any body, as,
to which Sect they belong, or what Creed
they believe; but I look on the Man who
is firmly persuaded of Infinite Wisdom &
Goodness super—intending & directing
every circumstance that can happen in
his lot-~I felicitate such a man as
having a solid foundation for his mental

enjoyment; a firm prop & sure stay, in

His d1

 

he wrt

Burn

flay

 

 

the hour of difficulty, trouble & distress;
& a never-failing anchor of hope, when he ‘
looks beyond the grave.60
His desire for moderation is again found in a letter
he wrote to Mrs. Dunlop:
We can no more live without Religion,
than we can live without air; but give
me the Religion, of Sentiment & Reason.
-—You know John Hildebroad's famous

epitaphr~

“Here lies poor old John Hildebroad,
"Have mercy on his soul, Lord God,
"As he would do, were he Lord God,
"And thou wert poor John Hildebroad."--
This speaks more to my heart, & has more
of the genuine spirit of Religion in it,
than is to be found in whole waggon-loads
of Divinity.-—I have not a moment more
left.6l
Burns's definition of personal worth has a Lockeian
flavor:
My definition of Worth is short: Truth
and Humanity respecting our fellow-creatures;
Reverence and Humility in the presence of
that Being, my Creator and Preserver, and

who, I have every reason to believe, will

 

 

Thong!
him m<
the e:

 

ments

 

 

79-

one day be my Judge.62

Though the humanitarian aspects of religion interested
him most, he never denied the need for repentance nor
the existence of a future state of rewards and punish-
ments:
I have Just heard Mr. Kirkpatrick
preach a sermon. He is a man famous for
his benevolence, and I revere him; but
from such ideas of my Creator, good Lord,
deliver me! Religion, my honored friend,
is surely a simple business, as it
equally concerns the ignorant and the
learned, the poor and the rich. That
there is an incomprehensible Great Being,
to whom I owe my existence; and that
He must be intimately acquainted with the
Operations and progress of the internal
machinery and consequent outWard deportment,
of this creature which He has made; these
are, I think, self-evident propositions.
That there is a real and eternal distinction
between virtue and vice, and, consequently,
that I am an accountable creature; that
from the seeming nature of the human mind
as well as from the evident imperfection,

nay, positive injustice, in the administration

 

 

 

Burns
“0f a1
Direct
enviat
all e;
i
passag
the A1
natur
Would
diffs
littl
sentl
more
aDDP<
relig
(win
Worl
Teli

Like

 

80.

of affairs both in the natural and moral j

worlds, there must be a retributive scene |

of existence beyond the grave; must, I

think, be allowed by every one who will g

give himself a moment's reflection.63 1
Burns was convinced that a natural God is democratic:
"Of all the qualities we assign to the Author and
Director of Nature," he wrote, "by far the most
enviable is, to be able to wipe away all tears from
all eyes.”64

The pre—Romantic bent shows up in some of these

 

passages, especially in the last one quoted; most of
the Augustans, though approving the idea that a
natural God has sympathy and forgiveness for all,

would have expressed the feelings in a somewhat
different manner. The utterances would have been a
little more restrained, a little less obviously
sentimental; the social implications would have been
more generalized. But with the Scotsman's intellectual
approach-—his distrust of both fear and adoration in
religion, his preference for a rational deity controlling
(with not too much direct interference) a rational
World, his desire to avoid excess of any kind in
religious matters-~they could have been in full accord.

Like the Neo—Classicists before him, Burns sought a

 

 

 

'thiswc

eupernz

c. g;
p
Burns

theolc

was c
fellc

fanai
endl4
inte

anti

him:

81. '
l
|

'thisworldly' compromise whereby one could be anti-

supernaturalistic without being anti-religious.

0. His Antipgthy to Metaphysical Complications }
Previous quotations have revealed the hatred that ‘ !

Burns had all his life for the 'damned dogmas' of ‘

theological dispute, and for their fanatiCal proponents.

He hated them because in his Opinion they kept men

from accepting each other with a reasonable tolerance

born of self—understanding and self-criticism. Like

the Augustans before him, he was gregarious, and he

 

was convinced that nothing is more destructive to
fellowship than fanaticism, especially religious
fanaticism.

But he had also a second reason for detesting
endless theological hagglings; he had the kind of
intellect and temperament that possesses a natural
antipathy to complications. The intricacy, as well
as the intolerance, of Calvinistic dogma disturbed
him:

I am in perpetual warfare with the
doctrine..."that we are born into this
world bond slaves of iniquity & heirs
of perdition, wholly inclined"...untill
by a kind of Spiritual Filtration or

rectifying process Called effectual Calling
& 0.65

 

In a l

a ceri

ena

him

 

82.

In a letter to James Burness in August l78h, he discussed
‘a certain evangelical sect:
Their tenets are a strange jumble of
enthusiastic Jargon, among others, she
[the leader of the grou§7 pretends to
give them the Holy Ghost by breathing
on them, which she does with postures
and practices that are scandalously
indecent....
Whenever we neglect or despise these
sacred Monitors [common sense and sound
reasofi7, the whimsical notions of a
perturbed brain are taken for the
immediate influences of the Deity, &
the wildest fanaticisms and the most
inconstant absurdities, will meet with
abettors & converts.66
Burns's distrust of 'the whimsical notions of a
perturbed brain' parallels closely the views of John
Locke, who in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(with which Burns was familiar) asserted that man
should be content with what he definitely knows-~that
God has given man sufficient equipment in soul and
mind, the ‘relative and practical understanding,‘ to
enable him to comprehend all that it is necessary for

him to understand. "Does it not often happen," asked

 

83.

Locke, "that a man of an ordinary capacity very well
understands a text or a law that he reads, till he
consults an expositor, or goes to counsel; who, by
that time he hath done explaining them, makes the
words signify nothing at all, or what he pleases?"67
When Locke observed that man destroys the small
but adequate amount of knowledge that he possesses
if he aspires to grasp everything,68 he was stating
an opinion with which Burns was in agreement. "The
circle of our acquaintance,“ Burns wrote, "like the
wide horizon, is too large for us to make anything
of it. We are amused for a while with the ill-defined,
distant objects; but our tired eye soon fixes with
delighted discrimination on the towering cliffs or the
Winding river....69 A similar limitation on intellectual
ambition is prOposed and Justified by Pope in An Essay
on Man:
Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reason, but from what we
know?
Of Man, what see we but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known,
'mis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who thro‘ vast immensity can pierce,

See worlds on worlds compose one universe,

 

 

assur
probi

'Ent

tent

gr 01

and

 

Observe how system into system runs, 2 1
What other planets circle other suns, '[ ‘
What vary'd Being peOples ev'ry star,

May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are.

But of this frame the bearings, and the ties,
The strong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Look'd thro'? or can a part contain the whole?

A. 0. Lovejoy in The Great Chain of Being has
observed that by and large the Neo-Classicists were

 

esprits simplistes——"minds which habitually tend to
assume that simple solutions can be found for the
problems they deal with."70 In reacting against
|EnthusiasmI for the incomprehensible, the mysterious,
and the complex that characterized the succeeding era,
the Augustans created for themselves another kind of
enthusiasm, equally strong, for the "simple truth of
things."'71 Robert Burns was also an esprit simpliste.
In this he differed from the Romantics who seemed often
to welcome complexity as the quality most valued in

temperaments, poems, and universes.

D. His Half—SkeptiCal Faith in Immortality

The emotional climate created by the eVangelical
groups, and resisted so strongly by most of the thinkers

and writers of the Augustan period, involved by necessity

 

a deep
it fol
an or(
and t
maint

depen

whi

wer

85.

a desperate belief that Heaven must be a certainty. For f;
it followed necessarily that if this earthly life was I" I
an ordeal to be endured, if man was essentially depraved,
and if God was a sort of vindictive despot who, to
maintain the climate of fear upon which his absolutism
depended, must (in the words of Holy Willie)

Send ane to heaven and ten to hell,

A' for thy glory,

And no for ony guid or ill
They‘ve done afore thee!

then there could be relief for the God—fearing only in

another life. But the Augustans did not consider this
world a tear-filled interlude, a phase to be tolerated
until death mercifully put an end to it all; they
believed that the life here was in itself a complete
program, that complete happiness Was attainable on
this earth. Consequently, for them there was no such
compelling necessity to believe in a Heaven, and
certainly not in an individualized kind of Heaven from
which those who did not adhere to a specific creed
were forever excluded.

The Augustans were willing to include another
existence in the scheme of things — Willing, not forced.
Chesterfield reported On one occasion that Pope had
often told him that he was a deist who believed in a

future state.72 But they could not accept the idea

 

 

that
life
certa

parti

The
upon
un 33
the
deg:

Clem

 

86.

that one must renounce the reasonable pleasures of this
life — in effect, be born again - in order to be
certain of the hereafter. In speaking of Pope's
particular compromise, Fairchild writes:
If Christianity implies the remaking

of man through faith in the Incarnation,

the atoning Sacrifice, and the

Resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son

of God, one must say that the Egggy

not merely ignores Christianity but

is radically inconsistent with it.

From this point of view the poem is

Obviously deistic. But if Christianity

is merely another name for the two

primary laws of natural religion — love

of God and love of man — then Pope Was

entitled to plead that his poem

inculcated the essentials of

Christianity.73
The need for spiritual rebirth is often most pressing
upon those who find this earthly existence essentially
unsatisfactory, and the intelligent, educated men of
the Neo-Classical era simply did not find it thus. The
degree to which they were satisfied with life has been
described by Basil Willey:

In the early and middle years of the

 

 

 

 

the

 

87.

eighteenth century the wealthy and the F
educated of Europe must have enjoyed
almost the nearest approach to earthly
felicity ever known to man. Centuries

of superstition, error, and strife lay
behind; most of the mediaeval ghosts
had been laid; a revolutionary era had
been successfully weathered; liberty

and philosOphy and the arts were raising

their heads once more. 'The vulgar,‘ , E
not yet indoctrinated with the Rights 3
of Man, were contented with the lot to 8
which an inscrutable Providence had

fortunately assigned them, or else

consoled themselves, as they were

advised to do by the clergy and moralists,

with thoughts of the future life. Most

of the English writers of the time felt

that they were living in an age of

enlightenment. The universe had been

explained, and - what gave added zest to

their satisfaction - explained by an

Englishman, and a pious Englishman at

that.7n
The Augustans had a second reason - in addition to

their satisfaction with this life ~ for being wary of

 

 

talk 0!
them f1
obviout
skeptic
accompa
that ix
when tl
intell¢
questi.
terms -
m0dere‘
future

R.
come c;
as mud
altern
yet he
he rea
he Sou

Deism,

from s
person
the Ju
than t

for he

88.

talk of Heavenly bliss; their rational sense restrained
them from subscribing wholeheartedly to a concept that
obviously could not be proved. The result was a half-
skeptical concession that immortality was feasible;
accompanying the concession, however, Was a feeling
that in any case the problem would take care of itself
when the time came. Their terminology reflected their
intellectual rather than emotional approach to the ;

question; they toned down, as it were, the religious

 

terms - sin, grace, and salvation - to the more 7
moderate, and more probable, conduct, virtue, and
future state.75

Robert Burns's views on the question of life to
come can also be termed half—skeptical. He resented,
as much as did any Augustan thinker, the arbitrary
alternatives presented in the emotional approach,
yet he was loath to dismiss the idea altogether. So
he reacted in a manner typical of his type of mind -
he sought a compromise. This compromise was "a mild
Deism, in part emotional, in part rationalistic."76

The emotional part of the compromise stemmed more
from sentimental humanitarianism than from any great
personal need or conviction. He felt that the kind,
the just, and the forgiving deserved a better fate
than that which the Calvinist clergy was predicting

for most of them. In 1789 he wrote:

 

In a
his

unli

 

89.

A strong persuasion in a future state of

existence; a proposition so obviously 1
probable, that, setting revelation aside,

every nation and people, so far as investi—

gation has reached, for at least near four

thousand years, have, in some mode or

other, firmly believed it. In vain

would we reason and pretend to doubt. I

have myself done so to a very daring i

pitch; but when I reflected, that I was

Opposing the most ardent wishes and the
most darling hopes of good men, and
flying in the face of all human belief,

in all ages, I was shocked at my own

77

conduct.
In another letter, written the same year, he revealed
his hope that an amiable social relationship, not too

unlike life here, might exist in another life:
Can it be possible, that when I resign
this frail, feverish being, I shall still

find myself in conscious existence: When

the last gasp of agony has announced that

I am no more to those that knew me, &

the few who loved me; When the cold,

stiffened, unconscious, ghastly corse

is resigned into the earth, to be the

 

 

prey of unsightly reptiles, & to become
in time a trodden clod, shall I be

yet warm in life, seeing & seen, enjoying
& enjoyed? Ye venerable Sages & holy
Flamens, is there probability in your
many conjectures, any truth in your

many stories, of another world beyond
death; or are they all alike baseless
visions & fabricated fables? If there

is another life, it must be only for the
just, the benevolent, the amiable, & the
humane; what a flattering idea, then,

is a World to come ! Would to God I as
firmly believed it, as I ardently wish it!
There I shall meet an aged Parent, now

at rest from the many buffetings of an
evil world against which he so long &
bravely struggled. There should I meet
the friend, the disinterested friend, of
my early life; the man who rejoiced to
see me, because he loved me & could serve
me - Muir, thy weaknesses were the
aberrations of Human—nature, but thy
heart glowed with everything generous,
manly, & noble; and if ever emanation from

the All~Good Being animated a human form,

 

 

asid
to A
impa
sine
invc

His

 

it was thine! -—There should I, with

speechless agony of rapture, again

recognise my lost, my ever dear MARY,

whose bosom Was fraught with Truth,

Honor, Constancy, & Love-—78

But the rationalistic at times threatened to push
aside the hopes based on humanitarianism. He confessed
to Alex Cunningham that he saw no Way in which an
impartial observer could keep from being doubtful,
since the whole subject of life after death "is so
involved in darkness that we want Data to go upon."79
His skepticism is shown also in this letter:
I hope, & believe, that there is a

state of existence beyond the grave

where the worthy of this life will

renew their former intimacies, with

this endearing addition, that "we meet

to part no more."--Still the damned

dogmas of reasoning PhilOSOphy throw in

their doubts; but upon the whole, I

believe, or rather I have a kind of

conviction, though not absolute

certainty, of the world beyond the

grave.—-

"Tell us, ye Dead,

 

92.

Will none of you, in pity, disclose the

secret,

 

What 'tis you are & E2 must shortly be!"
A thousand times have I made this apostrophe f
to the departed sons of men, but not one
of them has ever thought fit to answer
the question. "0 that some courteous
ghost would blab it out!" --but it cannot
be: you & I, my Friend, must make the
experiment by ourselves & for ourselves.80

A letter he wrote to his close friend, Robert Ainslie,

 

on June 30, 1788, demonstrates that his efforts to
balance the rational and emotional resembled the
‘thisworldly' approach of the Augustans:

I have every possible reverence for the
much-talk'd-of world beyond the Grave,
and I wish that which Piety believes and
Virtue deserves may be all matter of
fact; but in all things belonging to, and
terminating in, this present Scene of
Existence man has serious and interesting
business on hand.81

Snyder writes: "In framing for himself a religious
creed of this nature, Burns was once more both

following his own natural bent, and conforming to

one
Bri

n A

 

 

one or mmm
British thought.'82

 

 

 

he ]
wori
0

Am

 

 

IV Burns‘s Emphasis Upon This World

A. His Concern With The Actual

Burns accepted for what it was the world in which
he lived and worked; for him it was essentially a
world of sense. The objects that he used as subjects
for his poems were those that could be comprehended
by means of the natural faculties, without the aid of
a transforming imagination. Unlike those who seek
that perfectly satisfying good, who feel that the
world of sense lacks any permanence and that the
familiar joys, pains, and hOpes of a natural life
are illusory, Burns continued throughout his life (in
spite of the efforts of the clergy and several of
his correspondents to wean him away) to find the
world of sense sufficient both for his personal and
artistic needs. It was real to him in the same way
as it Was real to Locke and Hobbes, who taught that
whatever man knew he discovered by means of what
they often called 'nature's goods,I those mental
processes which man picked up from his environment.
Burns's thinking Was almost altogether on an empirical
plane; to him the future—state seemed to have been
some form of continuation of this life, with perhaps
the hate, extreme poverty, and avarice eliminated.

It was not an entirely different existence, as it

if ,-_ 4...} ___,r-._.____,_ i

8 B t MI. e I ..C
u a a a m r 0 ML n
m W S 3 Lb d w a

 

95-

must have been to Blake and Shelley. In Burns there
was a zest for living that resembled the Augustan's
satisfaction with this world; both felt that this
earthly life was on the whole satisfactory, and
that even if it were not, the remedy lay not in
dreams, visions, or myth-worlds, but in a greater
application of good taste, judgment, and self-control
to the mundane problems at hand. In his book, Swift:
an Introduction, Ricardo Quintana has given an
analysis of this particular Zeitgeist:
The comic view did not awake

aspirations, it afforded no visions

of progress, no glimpse of new

regions of experience. It was com-

pletely mature in recognizing the

limitations of all our moral and

intellectual resources. It is

perhaps least admirable in its

intensitivity to what Milton and

others had already conceived of

as the progressive revelation of

truth through time and experience.

But we must take it for what it

Was, and value it because of its

admirable hatred of all the forms

of delusion and false aspiration.

 

 

 

M»
1
0

01‘8(

bei

bec

She

lin

I

et

am

en

96.

Freedom from self-delusion did not bring

 

happiness as the fool and the knave con-
ceived it, but until we attained that
kind of freedom We could not be free in
any other sense. Civilization-~the life
of reason, of decency--began in seeing l
ourselves and the circumstances of human
life as they really are.83
In presenting a hope for the future in the con-
cluding stanza of A Man's A Man For A' That, Burns

credits sense and worth (both earthly virtues) with

being the avenue through which men will eventually
become brothers. It is doubtful that Blake or
Shelley could ever have been content with such
limited mediums. Burns shared with the Augustans an
ethic that grounded human values in earthly experiences
and relationships. Life to Burns was a collective
endeavor; to the Romantics it was more often a pact
between one man and his dreams. The kind of escapism
that one finds in QggiTo Th2 West Wind was not in Burns.
He had, writes George Bruce, "...the shrewd, appraising
eye of the man whose business is with the actual."84
Like most of the men of the eighteenth century, Burns
strove for improvement rather than metamorphosis.

In this striving, it should be said, he was not
aIWays as impersonal as, for example, Pepe Was in his

epitaph:

—‘—*

L11
0

B
t
m

 

 

 

97.

Pape‘s epitaph, though it had its \
origin in a genuine and moving experience, \
is not intended to be a mere statement 2
of it, but a decorative rendering of it, \
or, more accurately, of ideas arising from
it. The sharp impact of the experience
has been lost; indeed, it has never been
desired. Pepe's own feelings have been
decently veiled; he has concentrated on

the memorial. The event and its

 

accompanying emotions have been formalized t
and made impersonal to the poet. But ‘ ‘
that, of course, is what the polite
reader of the period wanted. He had no
desire for naked experience.85

Burns, in Highland Mary or Mary in Heaven, is closer

to this 'naked experience' than Pope or the great

mass of his audience ever wanted to be. Yet Burns‘s

own epitaph, and lyrics like A Red, Red Rose, have

about them enough impersonality that an Augustan

(who might have rejected Igtimatigg§_gf;;mmg§tgli§y

or Kubla Khan or On Seeing the Elgin Marbles) would

probably have found them not too objectionable or too

far removed from his principles of taste and control.

Burns‘s desire for self—knowledge was thisworldly.

That such knowledge was important to him is evident

 

t
y
.D

lett

 

by the stress he placed upon it in the autobiographical
letter he wrote to Dr. Moore:
It [ig7 ever my opinion that the great,

unhappy mistakes and blunders, both in

a rational and religious point of view,

of which we see thousands daily guilty,

are owing to their ignorance, or mistaken

notions of themselves.--To know myself

had been all along my constant study.—-I

weighed myself alone; I balanced myself

with others; I watched every means of

information how much ground I occupied

both as a Man and as a Poet: I studied

assiduously Nature‘s Design where she

seem'd to have intended the Various

Lights and Shades in my character.86
What Burns is voicing here Was expressed by Pope in
one line of An Essay on Man: “Know then thyself,
presume not God to scan." Self—knowledge, of course,
has been a primary objective of classical writers
and thinkers for thousands of years. But, since
writers and thinkers not in a classical current have
also sought self—revelation, it is important to
understand the method that Burns used to attain this
goal; he proposed to achieve his end through observation

of the actual; his method was empirical, emphasizing

 

 

 

the ne
metho<
denta
natur
sougk
depel
intu

inw

 

99.

the natural, the reasonable, the probable. When such a )
method is compared with a Romantic system like Transcen— )
dentalism, which is not empirical, its distinctive

nature becomes apparent. Transcendentalism, which also

sought self-knowledge (perhaps even to a greater degree),

depended hardly at all on the actual; its Reason Was

intuitive. It Was not an approach to a world of fact,

in which man was the highest fact (which essentially

was the Nee—Classical attitude), but rather a state

of mind, a grouping of intuitive perceptions, from

 

which any world, no matter what it might contain in a
tangible way, could be viewed. It was systematic
subjectivism. Burns's search for self—understanding
was systematic objectivism. Though as a pre—Romantic
he could become personal at times in his lyrics,
though some of his most famous poems were written
when he was listening to his instincts, he was not
essentially introspective - at least not in the sense
that Coleridge would have defined the word. The
opinions of others concerning both his character and
work were important to him to a degree that a dedicated

Transcendentalist would have found irritating.

B. His Sensuality

Burns had a strong, thisworldly interest in the

sensual; of the sensuous there is virtually none in his

 

writi
with

the e
the 1

wrot:

In

 

100.

writings. A comparison of one of the Scotsman's stanzas H

with a passage from Keats‘ The Eve of St. Agnes reveals ’\

the essential difference between the two poets, and
the two points of view, in respect to the senses. Keats 1
wrote:
...her vespers done,
or all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees

Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:

 

Half—hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,
Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees, 1
In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,
But dares not look behind, or all the charm
is fled.
In The Vision Burns treated a similar subject, but with
a different emphasis:
Down flow'd her robe, a tartan sheen,
Till half a leg was scrimply seen;
And such a leg! my bonie Jean
Could only peer it;
Sae straught, sae taper, tight an‘ clean
Nane else came near it.
The description of Keats is a serious sublimation of

sense, part of a fanciful world of enchantment into

 

 

which
racy ,
and d
unive
sugg:
tows
and

qual

101.

which the poet carries his reader; Burns‘s lines are
racy, sensual, and unsublimating; they record, simply
and directly, with no enchantment at all, man‘s
universal interest in a well shaped leg. There is no
suggestiveness, no 'sex interest' in Keats's attitude
toward the woman; Burns‘s stanza, both in statement
and impliCation, is all suggestiveness. Of this
quality in him Edwin Muir writes:
Ordinary thoughts and feelings are
not necessarily shallow, any more than
subtle and unusual ones are necessarily
profound. It can be said that Burns was
never shallow and never profound. He
did not have 'Those thoughts that wander
through eternity‘ which consoled Milton‘s
Satan in Hell; and he could not be
shallow as Tennyson sometimes Was. He
was sentimental, but sentimental with a
certain solidarity and grossness; there is
genuine feeling behind his maw‘kishness.87
Such a frank view on the carnal aspects of life
was common in the eighteenth century. Since the turn
of the nineteenth century, frank descriptions or
representations of the sexual functions have been

frowned upon as exercising an unhealthy influence

 

 

upon
nove
agai
soci

atti

deo

fea

 

upon the imagination; they appear, to be sure, in modern
novels, but the writer always knows he is running ,
against the preferences and sensibilities of respectable
society; our world is strongly influenced by the Puritan
attitude that certain terms - regardless of the context
or the intent of the artist — are not acceptable to

decent people's ears, and that the senses are to be

feared and distrusted as in themselves evil: I

Maybe thou lets this fleshly thorn

Buffet thy servant e'en & morn,

Lest he o'er proud & high should turn,...

Lord mind Gaun Hamilton's deserts:
He drinks, & swears, & plays at cartes;
" (Holy Willie' 6 Prayer)
In the Augustan era, on the other hand, physiological
processes were taken quite frankly; sex was not paraded
brazenly; it simply was accepted without embarrassed
blushes as a normal part of a very normal existence.
The same was true of the excretory functions. In
A Description of A City Shower, published in the
Tatler in 1710, Swift wrote:
Now from all Parts the swelling
Kennels flow,
And bear their Trophies with them as they go:

Filths of all Hues and Odours, seem to tell

HI};

 

 

 

103.

 

What Streets they sail'd from, by the Sight
and Smell. .

They, as each Torrent drives with rapid
Force

From Smithfield, or St. Pulchre's shape
their Course;

And in huge Confluent join at Snow-hill
Ridge,

Fall from the Conduit prone to Holbourn-
Bridge.

Sweepings from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts,
and Blood,

Drown'd Puppies, stinking Sprats, all
drench‘d in Mud,

Dead Cats, and Turnip—Tops come tumbling
down the Flood.

John Dryden, in The Medal, is equally 'earthy':

 

The Man who laugh'd but once, to see an
Ass

Mumbling to make the cross—grain'd
Thistles pass;

Might laugh again, to see a Jury chaw

The prickles of unpalatable Law.

The Witnesses, that, Leech-like, liv'd on
bloud,

Sucking for them were med'cinally good;

lot.

But, when they fasten‘d on their fester'd Sore,

 

Then, Justice and Religion they forswore;
Their Mayden Oaths debauch‘d into a Whore.
The Augustan mind would have labeled as emotional nonsense
Holy Willie's contention that drinking and swearing and
card playing were wrong per se. They would have been
willing to recognize that too much of any of these
could produce an imbalance in the character that might
lggd to corruption, but their stress would have been on
the excess, not the act itself. And, far from viewing
them as 'fleshly thorns,‘ they relied upon the senses
as the most valid avenue to knowledge and self-under-
standing.
The acceptance of the carnal as a natural part
of life runs consistently throughout Burns‘s writing.
He wrote Robert Cleghorn in October 1793:
Well! the Law is good for Something,
since we can make a B——dy—Song out of it.-—
(N.B. I never made anything of it in any
other Way-—) There is, there must be, some
truth in original sin.-#My violent propensity
to B--dy convinces me of it.—-Lack a day!
if that species of Composition be the Sin
against "the Haly Ghaist,“ "I am the most

offending soul alive.“

 

t Lb e r C e L E .\ I .i 1
P c h e G. T 0 b C 0 t C W m C e l C r.

 

 

105.

...Forgive this M scrawl.88 11
At times Burns apologized for his love of the carnal; but X
it is significant that these apologies were tendered to

persons whom he knew from past experience to be prudish

or over-sensitive. He Was appeasing them rather than

following his own natural inclination. Such forced

restraint is not found in the letters he wrote to

Cunningham, Aiken, Ainslie, and Cleghorn, with whom

he felt at ease. The ironic use of ‘wicked' is

 

evidence of this. For Robert Burns this sensual
quality was not a pose; he did not enjoy shocking his ‘
reader. Nor Was it an effort, as in the case of many

of Byron‘s tales, to hide an innate conservatism

behind an artificial screen of licentiousness. Byron

could be gross, but his grossness Was not typical

of the Romantic Revival; the senses are Sublimated by

the other writers of the period. Burns did not feel

compelled, as have many writers since his time, to

write poetry which always could be read safely in

mixed company. His unaffected acceptance of the

carnal as a tepic both for writing and discussion Was
essentially Neo—Classioal, for the Nee-Classical mind,

with its confidence in the rightness of a philosophy

of thisworldliness and its emphasis on the natural, the

normal, and the universal, did not feel guilty when

 

 

we

of

st
wi
he
of

106.

confronted by natural desires or situations; it placed
relatively little stress on the faults of the flesh,
preferring to strike at errors of the mind——false pride,
hypocrisy, and dullness. To Burns, also, these faults
were paramount; false pride Was his worst enemy, and he
both condemned and regretted it in himself; hypocrisy
was his favorite satirical subject; and his detestation
of dullness was no less strident than Dryden‘s. He

wrote to Mrs. Dunlop of being “...gloomy, sullen,

 

stupid, as even the deity of Dulness herself could
wish.”89 In another letter, written in April, 1793,
he told of being enraged as a small boy by the sight
of a young housemaid giving up her seat in church to
a "bloated son of Wealth and Dullness.“90 It is
significant that this recollection (Burns called it
“an original component feature of my mind“) stayed
with the post after other injuries, both to himself
and to those Whom he knew, had faded into the past.
Burns Was alWays fearful of being dull in his own
writing; in a letter to Cunningham, after he had
rambled for two pages, he wrote:
But lest I sink into stupid Prose,
and so sacreligiously intrude on the
office of my Parish priest who is in

himself one vast constellation of

 

 

10?.

dullness, & from his weekly zenith rays
out his contradictory stupidity to the
no small edification & enlightenment of
the heavy & opaque pericraniums of his
gaping Admirers: I shall fill up the
page in my own Way, & give you another
song....91
Of the eighteenth century poets, Swift is most like
him; the Dean had at times the same sentimental
grossness, the same feeling for the essence of
animal existence. "The most fruitful criticism of
his [Burns'g7 work," writes Robert Fitzhugh, “can
come from regarding him not as a 'Romantic‘ at all,
but as the last great figure of the earthly, racy,

and not infrequently bawdy Scots Vernacular Tradition.n92

C. His Unreflective Nature
Burns concerned himself little with the objects
that lay beyond the scope of his senses. His view
of life was tactical rather than strategic; like an
infantryman, he was vitally interested only with
that which was about him at a given time and place.
Since his temperament was never tranquil for any
extended length of time, he Was unable to ponder on
the numerous intricacies resulting from a given stimulus;

one finds in his work no synthesis of human experience;

 

108.

one idea or concept inspiring another more complex and
that one creating a third Was a motivation he never
had. Phenomena which would have induced in Wordsworth
or Keats or Coleridge a mood of solemn contemplation,
a sense almost of nothingness in the face of the
mundane considerations of life, left him relatively
unmoved; the mundane Was manecessary for his art

as it was unnecessary to Keats's. He could have

written a poem at the ruin of Tintern Abbey, but not

 

under the conditions in which Wordsworth composed;

his restless mind would have been unable to wait for
the inward-eye to recall, in its mysterious, deliberate
Way, the thoughts occasioned by the contact; when

he had to delay, the poetic urge became lost in

favor of a more immediate stimulus.

For Dryden and his successors it was specific
outward incidents rather than inner flashes of insight
that brought out the creative power:

There is a sense in which every poem
that Dryden wrote was occasional. Not
sudden convictions, or happy perceptions
of identities in the world of nature and
man, but circumstances were required to
draw him out on paper. Births, deaths,
literary events, political incidents

tapped in him the richest commenting mind

u
B

 

109.

that English poetry has known. He is the
celebrant, the signalizer par excellenc .
He succeeded Ben Jonson, the other great
occasional poet of the seventeenth century,
in a kind of writing that was peculiarly
Augustan.93

Burns's creativity also depended on circumstances:

He saw clearly, he took a keen delight
in the varied spectacle unrolled before
his eyes. Occasionally he treated some
natural object as symbolic of human
experience; but for the most part he was
content to see, to enjoy, and to reproduce
in his verse such elements of this
Spectacle as had given him most pleasure.
In this process of reproducing human

life, Burns's imagination Operated as
instantaneously as the high—speed lens
of a camera, but with a selective power
which the camera does not possess. Given
the prOper impulse, the current of feeling
began to flow, and the expression followed
hard upon the incident which it celebrated,
as the electric light glows the instant

the proper contacts have been made. It is

no uncommon thing to read in Burns's letters

mm W. T. km. t \m V O t a L .l h .1 LL .w S I E

 

 

that such and such an occurrence happened
but recently, and "today I send you the
enclosed poem.“' Before this poem was
ready for publication it might need
revision; but the primary act of composition
was reasonably sure to be the immediate
result of some specific stimulus.9u
Burns carried in his mind no imaginative notebook which
recorded for future use select impressions and opinions.
In his letters he sometimes recalled circumstances that
had either pleased or displeased him (though even here
the backWard glances are comparatively small in number),
but the recollections rarely found their way into his
verse. His trips to Edinburgh and through the highlands
of Scotland provided little which Was of poetic Value
to him, and after he returned home the life at hand
assumed almost immediate control over his interests.
Like the Neo-Classicists, he never felt the divine
illusion; he transformed nothing; objects upon which
he fixed his poetic attention remained, after he had
written about them, essentially the same as they were
before he found them. He was a reporter Who recorded
what he observed, mused casually and briefly (without
seriously puzzling the will) upon the experience, or

perhaps moralized overtly, and then went on to something

else:

Wi_._.__.._ _

 

111. '

Blake's preoccupation was always with

 

his attitude to life, with meaning and
with purpose, but Burns's preoccupation
was with life itself. His reflection ‘
was not the thought that furrows the
brow and tires the body but more or less

casual reflection upon experience.95

 

112.

V Burns‘s Primary Concern With Men and Women

The Neo—Glassicists were interested primarily in
mankind. Other cultures, literary periods, and artists
could be intrigued and motivated by the mysteries of
the supernatural or by the beneficial or destructive
powers of physical nature; the Augustans concentrated
almost constantly in their writing and thinking upon
the human being--more specifically, upon the human
being in his relation to the other human beings who
shared with him a man—created environment:

Literature has always dealt with
social life. Is there then anything
particular about its Augustan interests?
Three points perhaps call for attention:
first, that writers take as their main
material man in society, not man as an
individual soul faced with fateful
metaphysical problems, or as a seeker
for personal experience, an asserter
of self; second, that man and society
are shown in normal size and proportion,
in normal concerns and aspirations, not
as exceptional; and third, that the
aspects of life treated in literature

96

tend towards a family resemblance.

 

 

Hal
ar‘
W.

no

113.

Man was both the object and the subject of Augustan 3
art, and, in theory at least, he was supposed to be
typical, in his emotions, ideas, and aspirations, of
normal men in any age. When they thought of nature,
they did not picture in their minds the primitive
state of Rousseau or the rural scenes which Coleridge
and Wordsworth contemplated in solitude; their nature
was human--the natural in man in contrast to the
abnormal:
From the time of Wordsworth it has
been commonly assumed that Nature (trees,
flowers, birds, mountains, and so on)

must necessarily form the subject of a

 

large part—-perhaps even the chief part~—
of all poetry....The sociable eighteenth
century gave to Nature a less prominent
place, and held that the proper study
of mankind was not the river Duddon or
the Westmorland mountains, but Man.
Natural description in Pepe is usually
incidental, serving characteristically
to adorn or emphasize some statement or
event, as it does, too, in the epic
similes of Homer and Virgil.

The eighteenth-century attitude to

Nature is put clearly by James Beattie.

 

 

 

Human nature must always come first: Egg; f .
never fails to arouse interest.

Human affairs and human feelings are
universally interesting. There are many j
who have no great relish for the poetry
that delineates only irrational or inanimate
beings; but to that which exhibits the

fortunes, the characters, and the conduct

of men, there is hardly any person who
does not listen with sympathy and delight....

Mere descriptions, however beautiful, and

moral reflections, however just, become
tiresome where our passions are not
occasionally awakened by some event that
concerns our fellow—men.

(Essays on Poetry and Music...,
1776, Do 373

When Beattie wrote these words he had not
forgotten Thomson's Seasons and the many
other descriptive poems such as Mallet's
Excursion and Savage's Wanderer. The
descriptive poem had become so familiar
to readers of English poetry that in 1762
it was actually included among the
recognized Kinds in a well—known manual

on poetry. But to Beattie, as to most

 

115.

eighteenth-century readers, Nature Was
always more interesting when it was 1!
involved with Man....

It Was Man, Walking amid the glad (or
sad) creation, that gave to Nature its
crowning interest and Justified the
extended description.

The taste for mountains and cataracts,
for tempests and floods, for the turbulence

of stormy seas and the tortured and

 

fractured surfaces of the earth, has
rightly been associated with romanticism.
The normal eighteenth-century preference
was for the natural scene that showed
welcome signs of Man's occupation, for
the cultivated landscape with smoke rising
from cottage chimneys, and the spire of
the decent church topping the neighbouring
h111.97
The Augustans felt that the artist, since his major
concern was man, should follow Pope's advice as given
in the opening passages of An Essay on Man:
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield;
The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore

Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;

 

116.

Eye Nature‘s walks, shoot Folly as it flies, ‘
And catch the Manners living as they rise.

But not as they rise, it should be said, in the rare or

unique situation; the only manners of living worth 1

artistic attention were those which reflected the

immutable principles, aspirations, and conduct of

human beings throughout history. To the Augustans,

man the ascetic or mystic, who solved his problems

and reached his conclusions through individual pro-

 

cesses apart from the c00peration of other men, was
for artistic purposes of little interest and, even i
more important, of small lasting value. They had a ‘
passion for norms; only if a value, a trait, or a
virtue was representative and probable was it
considered suitable for art. Furthermore, it had to
be connected to man the social creature, one who Was
at once a citizen of a city, a nation, and a world.
The Romantic ideal of solitary grandeur had no
appeal for the Neo—Classicists, and if there was
one thing they detested more than anything else it
was the 'great' or super-man.
Robert Burns was also concerned mainly with
people; it is difficult to find a poem anywhere in
his works (it is virtually impossible if one scans
his most representative works) that does not have

human beings as a central interest:

 

 

117.

Rarely...does one find a poem in which 1
Nature, even of the sort that Burns knew ‘
best, seems to have been the poet's
primary concern. Burns was not given to .
”view hunting." He treated Nature in
his verse as he experienced it in his
life: he made it the setting, the back-
ground, for the human drama. The world
of Nature played a large part in the lives

of Burns and his neighbors; it plays a

 

large part in his poetry. But it functions i
only incidentally in this poetry. For to ‘
Burns men and women were far more important
and more interesting than anything else
in the universe; his poetic vision Was
focused on them, and not on the surrounding
hillsides and meadows.
To say that Burns‘s primary concern was
with men and women is more accurate than to
say that he was interested in Man. He could
not possibly have written an ”Essay on Man."
He knew his friends and neighbors, however,
rather better than they knew themselves;
he Was interested in their manifold affairs;
it was of them, and of peOple like them
all over the world, that he delighted to sing.98

 

118.

When Burns writes about the field mouse, he views the I
creature as a fellow mortal. The louse is significant ;
and fitting as a topic for poetry not mainly because

it is a louse, but because it is on the hat of a ~
woman whom the poet wishes to satirize. The Twa Dogs
are chiefly interesting to Burns because their actions
and characteristics can be compared to human conduct.
He uses animals much in the same Way as Swift does.

His letters abound with references that demonstrate how

absorbed he Was With human beings. To Dr. John Moore

 

he wrote: "At Edinburgh I was in a new world; I 3
mingled among many classes of men, but all of them

new to me; and I was all attention 'to catch the
manners living as they rise.'"99 At another time he
told Moore: “I spent my seventeenth summer on a
smuggling coast a good distance from home at a noted
school, to learn Mensuration, Surveying, Dialling, &
c. in which I made a pretty good progress.--But I

made greater progress in the knowledge of mankind.“100
Burns remembered his father chiefly for his knowledge
of human nature: "...he pickt up a pretty large
quantity of Observation and Experience, to which I

am indebted for most of my little pretensions to
wisdom.~-I have met with few who understood ‘Men,

“101

their manners and their Ways‘ equal to him Burns

advised those who sought his counsel to concentrate

 

n
o

 

119.

on mankind:
I have nothing to tell you of news;
for myself, I am going on in my own way—-
taking as light a burden as I can, of the
cares of the world; studying men, their
manners & their ways, as well as I can.
Believe me Tom, it is the only study in
this world will yield solid satisfaction....
Observe mankind around you; endeavour by
studying the wisdom & Prudence of some,
and the folly & madness of others, to make
yourself wiser & better.102
When he was planning specific poetic productions, his
emphasis was upon the human aspects of the idea or
situation; he wrote to Robert Graham on September lo, 1788:
I am thinking of something in the
rural way of the Drama-kind.—-Originality
of character is, I think, the most
striking beauty in that Species of
Composition, and my wanderings in the
way of my business would be vastly
favorable to my picking up original
traits of Human nature.103
Burns believed that he has a special contribution to
make to that art which has man and his affairs as its

main concern. After telling Dr. Moore that he realized

 

 

that
Writ
acqu
have

in:

he

120.

that he had poetical talent, he said: "...as few, if any ’
Writers, either moral or poetical, are intimately ‘
acquainted with the classes of Mankind among whom I
have chiefly mingled, I may have seen men and manners
in a different phasis....10LP
To Burns, nature was the natural in man. Freedom,
he believed, was the natural state of man; in Man Was
Made to Mourn he asked:
If I'm designed yon lordling's slave-—

By Nature's law design'd——

 

Why was an independent wish

E'er planted in my mind?
In the Epistle to J. Lapraik he used nature as a synonym
for natural:

What's a‘ your jargon 0‘ your Schools,

Your Latin names for horns an' stools?

If honest Nature made you fools,

What sairs your grammars?
This stanza is often cited as an example of Burns's
contempt for learning. Yet the Scotsman was not
denouncing learning as such; he was merely saying that
it Was of little value if the user was naturally a
fool. To say that Burns went straight to nature is to
say that he went straight to human—nature.
The norm that Burns recognized was identical with

the Neo-Classical norm. The classes of mankind among

Bur
1119
0th
ca]

gr
to
v
f
m
s
m

n
m n
"n y

 

121.

whom he mingled must have included a number of eccentrics,
yet he did not use them as subjects for his poems.
Burns's characters can be gross, profane, dirty, and
lustful, but they are not mentally retarded or in
other ways distinctly unrepresentative. He has been
called, and with some truth, a poet who never quite
grew up; yet nowhere in his poetry is there a tribute
to the spiritual superiority of youth or to the
virtues of an uncivilized existence. Burns had a
fatherly affection for his children, but he did not
consider them as suitable topics for poetry; he
seemed to have had the Augustan view that only the
mature person is a fitting subject:
It Was only {rude people,| [taught Lockg7
...who still believed in witches and fairies.
Such notions belonged to the childhood
of a race; but when a nation had
intellectually come of age it put away
childish things.
In his attitude to the child and to
childish ideas Hobbes was in no sense
peculiar, even though he Was a bachelor
and getting on to sixty when he was

writing his Leviathan. The glorification
The

 

of the child is a romantic habit.

 

 

 

eighteenth century generally thought of
the child as an undeveloped adult, a r
half-articulate being which might come to
full intellectual stature when it grew

up, but which was not yet fully developed
mentally and was therefore of only limited
interest. Poets such as Ambrose Philips,
who constituted himself a sort of
unofficial laureate of children, only
incurred ridicule....

To Hobbes, then, the right man Was

 

the adult, the man who was living in the
clear light of reason, who had stepped
free from all superstition, and who
could think steadily--controlling alike
his imagination and his prejudice. Had
he gone so far as to sneer openly at the
imagination, he might have found an
opponent with the courage and the ability
to answer him; but he did something
subtler and far more damaging—~he simply
assumed that it was most commonly to be
found in children, lunatics, and the
uneducated.105

To Burns, as to the Augustans, the normal was that in

civilized society which was the most natural and fully

 

 

123.

developed, i.e., the least corrupted. Burns really
preferred as such neither peasant nor aristocrat.
In his poems he satirizes the noble, but in his letters
he shows contempt for the peasant who is content
to be ignorant. In his Opinion both lacked the balance
of intellect and emotion, the humaneness, the elevation
(to use his favorite term) which an .Enlightened culture
required of its members. His appraisal of his wife,
which he submitted to Mrs. Dunlap in a letter, reveals
the high value that he placed_upon these civilized
virtues:
Mrs. Burns is getting stout again,

& laid as lustily about her today at

breakfast as a Reaper from the corn—

ridge.-—That is the peculiar privilege

& blessing of our hale, sprightly

damsels, that are bred among the Hay

& Heather.~—We cannot hope for that

highly polished mind, that charming

delicacy of soul, which is found among

the Female world in the more elevated

stations of life, which is certainly

by far the most bewitching charm in

the famous cestus of Venus.——It is

indeed such an inestimable treasure,

that, where it can be had in its native

 

 

 

 

Burns felt
it was to
must turn

believed,

To Robert
society we

tributed b

121».

heavenly purity, unstained by some one

or other of the many species of caprice,
I declare to Heaven I would think it
cheaply purchased at the expense of other
earthly goods.106
, as did most of the eighteenth century, that
the individual without extremes that a nation
for the best expression of its Values. He
moreover, that he was such a person:

...it is on such individuahaas I, that for

the hand of support & the eye of intelligence,

a Nation has to rest.--The uniformed mob

may swell a Nation's bulk; & the titled,

tinsel Courtly throng may be its feathered
ornament, but the number of those who are
elevated enough in life, to reason and

reflect; & yet low enough to keep clear of

the venal contagion of a Court; these are

the Nation's strength.107

Burns, then, as to the Augustans, an Enlightened
s the product of the best that could be con—

y a cultured and progressive middle class

which worked c00peratively, rather than individually,

for the mutual benefit of all.

Nothi

ng better exemplifies Burns's primary concern

with people than the secondary place that physical

 

 

125.

nature occupied in his poetry. He was not unappreciative
of the beauties of nature; to certain natural objects-
flOWers, streams, crops, lower animals—~he was keenly
sensitive; but he always found it necessary to relate
them in some way to men. Pantheism had no place in
his scheme of things. If the relationship between
the observed and the general observer could not be
made, the object had little poetic value for him. He
lived virtually all of his life within Walking distance
of the sea and mountains, and he must have visited
both many times, yet they played an insignificant role
in his art; for they were not part of the daily
experiences of the people about whom he wrote. To
Burns, physical nature was like the scenery of a
legitimate stage; it provided a colorful background,
and at times a mood or atmosphere, for the human
beings who were the actors, the paramount interest.
In Highland Mary, e.g., the first six lines are almost
purely scenic:

Ye banks and braes and streams around

The castle 0' Montgomery,

Green be your woods, and fair your flowers,

Your waters never drumliel

There Summer first unfald her robes,

And there the langest tarry!
The description is attractive, though, like his imagery,

 

 

126.

it is not outstanding. The real poet makes himself known
in the last two lines of the stanza:

For there I took the last fareweel

O' my sweet Highland Mary!
The beginning lines are merely a setting, an introduction;
they are significant not in themselves but because they
describe the spot where Burns met Mary for the last
time. In The Banks 0' Doon nature helps the poet
recall past acquaintances:

Ye banks and braes o' bonie Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?

How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I see weary fu' 0' care?

Thou'll break my heart, thou warbling bird

That wantons thro' the flowering thorn!

Thou minds me o‘ departed Joys,

Departed never to return.
Here nature is a reminder, but not, as is often the case
in Wordsworth, a reminder of pleasure achieved through
an intense introspection, in which the natural object
and the subjective thoughts it inspires are sufficient
for poetry. These two alone were seldom enough for
Burns; he Was only mildly introspective, and he
preferred to relate whatever he thought and observed to

other human beings.

 

 

 

_ ._.__. a

127.

VI Burns's Stress on Reason and Common Sense

On August 10, 1788, Burns wrote to Mrs. Dun10p:
I don't know if I ever mentioned
to you my favorite Quotation--
"----On Reason build Resolve,
"That column of true majesty
in Mani"

The Muses must not be offended when I tell

them, the concerns of my wife & family will,

in my mind, always take the Pas; but I

assure them, their Ladyships shall ever

come next in place.108
If one examines this quotation out of context (and Burns,
unfortunately, sometimes used it that way) it is mis—
leading. For reason to the twentieth century is an
aloof quality which is associated with higher mathematics
and the scientific analysis that develOps a law from a
set of impersonal facts. To the man of today, reason
is not synonymous with good sense, and one frequently
hears the remark that this or that person should not
have had to reason out a problem, since common sense
could have given him the answer. When, however, the
quotation is interpreted in relation to the paragraph
of which it is an integral part, it becomes evident

that to Burns reason was not analysis, but that which

 

 

 

128.

was reasonable. He was well aware that at times his
passions drove him to excess, that his sentiment became
sentimentality; this realization apparently caused him
to admire all the more the Reason that Pope described
in An Essa on Man, Epistle II:
Thicker than arguments, temptations throng,
At best more watchful this, but that more
strong.
The action of the stronger to suspend
Reason still use, to Reason still attend.
Attention, habit, and experience gains;
Each strengthens Reason, and Self-love
restrains....
Modes of Self-love the Passions we
may call:
'Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all:
But since not ev'ry good we can divide,
And Reason bids us for our own provide;
Passions, tho' selfish, if their means
be fair,
List under Reason, and deserve her care.
It was reasonable to Burns that poetry should play a
vital, but not an all exclusive, role in his life. When

he wrote to Robert Muir: "-—away with old—wife prejudices

and tales,"109 he was not objecting to an exaggerated

 

 

 

129.

story or belief being employed in a spirit of fun; no one
enjoyed a tall yarn more than did Burns. What Burns
was denouncing was the unreasonableness of such things
if they were taken seriously. Reason to him then, Was
not a mental power that probed objectively into a

face or characteristic, seeking to discover the nature
of the object observed; Burns's reason Was the degree

of probability existing in the fact or characteristic
itself. In determining what was reasonable, he did not
rely primarily on personal decision; for him, as for
most of the men of the eighteenth century, the Opinion
of the age, a uniform social and intellectual conscious-
ness, was the major guide.

Because of his dream of a world-wide brotherhood,
Burns at timeshas been termed an idealist. However, if
one defines idealism in the Shelleyan sense, Burns
approaches only half way to meet the Romantic. The
Scotsman's manner of utterance sometimes presages
Shelley. However, the content of Burns's idealism
would seem to conform more to the Augustan dream—-

"that order which God's wisdom presents to the sense

and reason of men, to serve them as an equal and common
rule of conduct, and to guide them, without distinction
of race or sect, towards perfection and happiness."110
Burns was too bound to his environment to be a lyrical

idealist in the complete Romantic interpretation of the

 

e
t

 

 

 

term. When Burns wrote, in A Man's a Man For A' That,:

 

Then let us pray that come it may,

As come it will for a' that,

That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,

May bear the gree, and a' that.

For a' that, and a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,

That man to man, the world o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that,
he Was voicing a reasonable hope for the future, a hope
based on the conviction that if men employed sense
and Judgment in their relations with each other, they
could work out, right here on earth, a satisfactory
existence. The brotherhood of which'Burns spoke was
essentially world—wide appreciation and understanding
by all men of the reasonable in human life; it was a
universal tolerance rather than a universal good, and
was somewhat closer to John Locke's philos0phy of
compromise than to the lofty dreams of Shelley or
Keats or Blake.

In his letters Burns used the terms common sense,
good sense, and sensibility many times. When Mrs.
Agnes M'Lehose wrote him that a friend insisted that
s a married woman with children had no right to

she a

take an interest in another man, even though she had

 

 

131.

been estranged from her husband for several years,
Burns asserted:

Away with declamationl let us appeal
to the bar of common sense....The laws
of your country, indeed, for the most
useful reasons of policy and sound
government, have made your person
inviolate; but are your heart and
affections bound to one who gives not
the least return of either to you?

You cannot do it; it is not in the

 

nature of common sense, can it be

wrong, is such a supposition compatible

with the plainest ideas of right and

wrong, that it is improper to bestow

the heart and these affections on

another-~while that bestowing is not

in the smallest degree hurtful to your

duty to God, to your children, to

yourself, or to society at large?111
There is much in this passage, in addition to the appeal
to sense, that is Augustan. The laws of a country
exist because it is reasonable that they should exist;
the nature of things is an important guide to conduct;

and the basic concepts of right and wrong are plain,

 

 

 

 

 

132.

i.e., they are agreed upon by all sensible, civilized

 

men. Sense was for Burns a necessary part of a poet's
equipment: "...there must be in the heart of every
bard of Nature's making, a certain modest sensibility,
mixed with a kind of pride, that will ever keep him

out of the Way of those windfalls of fortune which
frequently light on hardy impudence and foot—licking
servility."112 The ideal of a celestial fire producing
art spontaneously has fascinated more than one poet;

Burns himself talked often of Nature's fire, but it

 

is evident in his letters that he meant only that a
poet must have in the beginning a reasonable amount of
natural ability; for him there Was nothing magical

in the creation of art. Common sense, good sense,
sensibility, reason, or simply the one word, sense—-
for Burns they all meant essentially the same thing.
The desire for the golden mean is found everywhere

in Burns; the practice varied, but the objective almost
always remained constant. "His rhetoric, his humour,
his satire, his platitude,“ Edwin Muir writes, "have
all the same solidity, the same devastating common
sense."113 Hugh Walker, in Three Centuries of Scottish
Literature, 1;, suggests that Burns's sense, like Sir
Walter Scott‘s was often more apparent than his genius:

"He possessed a clear, penetrating, logical intellect,

 

 

 

fij

133.

and sound, vigorous Judgment....he captivates the man
of common sense, who finds his sober view of life
expressed by the poet."114
Thomas Carlyle, with this sense, Judgment, and
intellect in mind, compared Burns to Mirabeau:
I feel as if Burns might be found to
resemble Mirabeau more than any other.
They differ widely in vesture; yet
look at them intrinsically....The
characteristic of Mirabeau, too, is
veracity and sense....Burns, too, could
have governed, debated in national
assemblies; politicized, as few could.115
Whatever detailed objections there might be to this
analogy, it is certainly true that a primary power
of both Burns and Mirabeau Was their ability to
apply eloquent sense to a practical purpose. Mirabeau,
at a time in his country‘s history when enthusiasm
for extremes Was rapidly sweeping aside natural
restraints, endeavored to apply to human affairs and
to the relationship of the gOVerning to the governed
the classical virtues of reasonableness and common
sense. Burns viewed the Revolution from a distance
and was affected by its idealism, yet he wrote no

poems in direct support of it; and it is entirely

 

 

 

pt ...u ..T. .u

 

 

 

possible that had he been on the scene he would have
Certainly, in regard

thought as did the Frenchman.
to the human affairs with which he was directly

familiar, he upheld the cause of restraint and

moderation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

135.

VII ggrns's "Cgmicfi’ View of Life

 

In discussing the personal qualities that enabled i
Burns to endure, with a smile, bad health, poverty, T
and official censure, Snyder Writes: V

Burns was a humorist and a moralist
at the same time; his sense of humor
saved him from taking his preacher's
function too seriously; his conscious-
ness of the significance of human life
prevent him from degenerating into a

mere entertainer....His moods were as

 

changeable as the skies of his native

Ayrshire, but even in the blackest

depression his ability to laugh at

what Fate might offer him saved him

from the misanthropy which easily

could have been his lot.116
His talent for laughing at life while taking it seriously
found its outlet in satire-~"the literary expression of
a laughter which implies rebuke, a laughter spiced
with something of malice, a scornful amusement at the
follies and foibles of an individual or of human
nature and human institutions in general."ll7 In no
other phase of his work is the Scotsman so obviously

a part of the century that preceded him, and so

 

 

136.

definitely removed from the spirit and temper of the
Romantic Revival for which he Was in other ways a
harbinger.

In his most representative satires, Burns, like
Dryden and Pope, demonstrated that delicate balance of
ridicule and censure, Without which a satire can
deteriorate into burlesque or invective. Address of
Beelzebub is one example of this balance. A number of
Highlanders, in order to escape from the economic
domination of their lords, had planned to emigrate to
Canada; the lords in retaliation formed a sort of
protective—association and appealed to the law to
assist them in maintaining the status gu . Pretending
to side with the lords, Burns wrote:

Some daring Hancock, or a Franklin,

May set their Highland bluid a-ranklin;
Some Washington again may head them,

Or some Montgomerie, fearless, lead them;
Till (God knows what may be effected
When by such heads and hearts directed)
Poor dunghill sons of dirt an' mire

May to Patrician rights aspire....

They, an' be damn'd, what right hae they
To meat or sleep or light 0' day,

Far less to riches, pow'r, or freedom,

But what your lordship likes to gie them?

 

 

 

‘7.— f5

137.

The subtlety of this attack, its carefully sustained :
appearance of objectivity, is in the best Neo-Classical ‘
manner. I v -

Another example of this balance is Holy Willie's
Ezayer. The deceptively simple device of having the
hypocritical elder condemn himself, and the artistic
restraint in the performance——the careful avoidance of
absurd, elements, the muting of the burning anger that

must have been inside of the post as he wrote, the

 

maintainance throughout of the liturgical note-—are in
the tradition of Jonathan Swift. “Burns had," writes f
Snyder, "the skill of the born cartoonist, who
avoids the gross exaggeration which would render his
caricature ineffective, and instinctively singles out
the two or three features of his subject most certain
to be recognized-—and laughed at--by the crowd."118
Of the numerous literary skills that are grouped
under the broad classification of satire, none was
more highly regarded by the Augustans than the deft
use of irony; it Was this that proved most convincingly
the efficacy of their artistic principles of judgment,
balance, and self—control. Robert Burns used concealed
mockery both in his poems and his letters, and he used
it more often than he did any other literary device.

At times the mockery was so cleverly concealed that

 

 

138.

several generations of critics and readers received it,
as did apparently his correspondents, as the crude
efforts of a half-educated man to pay homage to his

119 On January 12, 179b, Burns, in concluding ?

betters.
a letter to Maria Riddell, wrote:
With the profoundest respect for 1

your exalted abilities; the most sincere ;

esteem & ardent regard for your gentle 1

heart & amiable manners; & the most

fervent wish & prayer for your welfare,

peace & bliss-—

I have the honor to be, MADAME,
your most devoted humble servant
Robert Burns.120
Of this letter Ferguson writes: "Even if the whole
text did not make it clear that these words were
written in bitterest sarcasm, the enormous "MADAME"-—
its initial a full half—inch in height—~would be
proof enough."121 Even when the irony was not as
thoroughly concealed as this, Burns showed himself
to be a master of the medium. To The Rev. George
Husband Baird he wrote in February 1791:
You who are a Divine, & accustomed to
soar the Wild—goose heights of Calvinistic
Theology, may no doubt look down with

contempt on my creeping notions; but I,

 

 

 

 

 

 

who was forced to pick up my fragments of
knowledge as the hog picks up his husks,
at the plough-tail, can understand nothing
sublimer than this debtor & creditor system.122
The long letter to Charles Sharpe, written in April, 1791,
is unbroken irony; so sustained and even is the covert
sarcasm that it is difficult to pick out superior parts.
Burns had put words to a tune that Sharpe had composed;
in telling his correspondent of the experiment, the
Scotsman Wrote:
It is true, Sir, you are a gentleman

of rank & fortune, and I am a poor devil;

you are a feather in the cap of Society,

& I am a very hobnail in his shoes; yet

I have the honor to belong to the same

family with you, & on that score I now

address you....By our common Family, I

mean, Sir, the Family of Muses....The

other day, a brother Cat-gut gave me a

charming Scots air of your composition.

——If I was delighted with the tune, I was

in raptures with the name you have given it;

& taking up the idea, I have spun it into

the three stanzas inclosed.--Will you allow

me, Sir, to present you them, as the

 

 

dearest offering that a misbegotten son

 

of Poverty & Rhyme has to bestow?--I
have a woman's longing to take you by
the hand & unburthen my heart....But,
Alas, Sir! to me you are unapproachable.
--It is true, the Muses baptized me in
Castalian streams, but the thoughtless
gipseys forgot to give me A NAME....

As you, Sir, go thro' your role with

such distinguished merit, permit me to

 

make one in the chorus of universal
applause, & have the honor of subscribing
myself, with the highest respect for your
character, & the warmest wish for your
welfare,

Sir, your most devoted humble servant

Johnie Fae—-123

 

 

CONCLUSION

Robert Burns thought of himself and the time
in which he lived as an integral part of the Augustan
tradition. He felt that assurance that comes to a
writer when he feels he is creating in a climate of
opinion in which the norms and Values are relatively
clear cut. Burns borrowed extensively from Neo-
Classical sources and usually proudly acknowledged
his obligations. Like the Augustans, he Was not
compelled to struggle for artistic acceptance; his
clarity and readability stemmed in no small measure
from the knowledge that he had a ready—made audience
with whom he shared a common body of beliefs and
values.

Having few personal theories on the nature and
functions of art, Burns relied upon Augustan writers
and critics for whatever critical principles and
practices he needed. He employed commonplace themes,
accepted and tried forms, a relatively simple and
subdued vocabulary, and the proverbial observation
and truism. His imagery on the whole remained close
to the personal experiences and intellectual level of
his readers and listeners.

In his quest for a religious viewpoint that

would satisfy his desire for a reasonable, humane God

 

f
!
i

 

 

 

whom he could worship without fear or adoration, Burns
turned back to the natural—religion of Addison and
Locke. It suited his gregarious, unmystical nature
and offered him a welcome alternative to the
unreasonableness and severity of Calvinism.

Like the writers of the Augustan period, Burns
was only mildly introspective. The brooding note,
an important feature of the art of the Romantic
Revival, is rarely found in his writings. An earthy,
often boisterous sense of humor and a preoccupation
with actual persons and their immediate loves, fears,
and daily problems prevented him from reflecting for
long upon any experience.

The various Augustan elements in Burns came
to focus in his satire. In no other phase of his
work was he more conclusively a part of the temper
and outlook on life of the era that preceded him—~
and farther from the climate of opinion that was

Romanticism.

 

2.
3.
4.
5.

6.

8.

9.

10.
ll.
12.
13.

14.
15.

l6.

17.
18.

 

 

FOOTNOTES

J. De Lancey Ferguson, The Letters of Robert Hgggg,
I, xxx-xxxi.

gpgg., p. 274.

;p;g., p. 258.

David Daiches, Robert Burns, pp. 87-8.

James Sutherland, Preface to Eightegpth Century
Poetry, p. 134.

Letters, I, 69.

lbig., p. 271.

H. V. D. Dyson and John Butt, Augustans and
Romantics, p. 23.

Sutherland, pp. 65-6.

Dyson and Butt, pp. 25-6.

Babette Deutsch, Potable Gold, p. 24.

Ehg_New Winston Dictiggggy

William Minto, Literature of thgfigeorgian Era,
p- 352.

Sutherland, p. 60.

H. N. Fairchild, Religious Trends in English Poetry,
III, p. 61.

R. M. Robertson, "The Art of Burns," flgw_§g§gy§

Toward A Critical Method, p. 271.

Letters, II, 283.

Letters, I, 177.

 

 

19. Edwin Muir, "The Burns Myth," Robert Burns:

New Judgments, pp. 7-8.

20. R. K. Root, The Poetical Career of Alexander !

3223, p. 16.

21. Dyson and Butt, p. 24.

22. Letters, I, 53.

23. Horace, The Complete Works of Horace, ed. C. J.
Kraemer, p. 401.

24. Daiches, p. 214.

25. Classical and Romantic, p. 30.

 

 

26. "Essay on Pope," Modern Essays in Criticigm, ed.
A. S. Cairncross, p. 96.

27. D. F. Bond, "Distrust of the Imagination in Neo-
Classicism," P , XIV (1935), 65.

28. Ricardo Quintana, Swift: An Introdugtigg,
pp. 190-91.

29. Shglley's Idols of thg Cave, pp. 217-18.

30. A. O. Lovejoy, Thgidreat Chain of Being, p. 26.

31. Root, p. 160.

32. Letters, I, 177.

33. Ibid., p. 8.

34. lbi§., p. 162.

35. gp;g., p- 75-

36. J. B. Pick, “The Poetry of Robert Burns,"
Robert Burns: New Jud ments, p. 59.

37. Louis Cazamian, A History of Engli§h_Literature

(1660—1932), p. 108.

 

 

38.
39.

40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.

46.
47.
48.
49.
5o.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.

111.

Root, pp. 24-5.

Basil Willey, The Eighteenth Century Background,
p. 20.

Letters, I, 261.

Letters, II, 181.

Letters, I, xxx.

Letters, II, 167—8.

lhi§-. p. 239.

Franklyn Bliss Snyder, The Life of Robert Burns,
p. 472.

Snyder, p. 461.

Letters, II, 64.

Letters, I, 142.

2219., p. 135—36.

Snyder, p. 28.

Alfred Kazin, The Portable Blake, p. 4.

 

Kazin, pp. 24-5.
David L. Clarke, Shellev's Prose, pp. 213—14.

____——Ib—-—-*.—
Shelley's Religion, p. 4.
Clarke, p. 182.

Letters, I, 161.

 

Willey, p. 7.
gp;g., p. 8.
Letters, I, 159.
Letters, II, 281.

Ibid., p. 45.

 

 

 

62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
7o.
71.

72.

73.
72+.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.

 

Letters,_I, 15s.

 

lhig., p. 342.

Ibid., p. 131.

gpgg., p. 242.

Lbig., p. 18-19.

John Locke, Selections, p. 38.

Locke, pp. 82-3.

Letters, I, 24.

Lovejoy, p. 7.

Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of thg Eighteenth
Century Philosonhggg, p. 92.

H. N. Fairchild, Religious Trgpds in En lish Poetr ,
I, p. 500.

Fairchild, I, p. 499.

Willey, pp. 44—5.

Becker, pp. 48-9.

Snyder, p. 452.

Letters, I, 359.

3112., p. 373~

Lgttggg, II, 13.

l§i§., p. 118.

Lgttggg, I, 232.

Snyder, p. 452

Quintana, p. 191-

George Bruce, "Burns - A Comparative View,“

Robert Burns: New Jud ments, p. 20.

 

 

 

85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.

93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.

109.

 

Sutherland, p. 75.
Letters, I, 114.

 

Edwin Muir, p. 8.

Letters, II, 213.

lg;g., p. 223.

Ibid., p. 165.

Ihig., p. 66.

Robert Fitzhugh, Robert Burns: His Associatgg
and Contgmporaries, p. 12.

Mark Van Doren, John Dryden, p. 107.

Snyder, p. 467.

J. B. Pick, p..56.

A. C. Humphreys, The AugustagfiWorld, p. 42.

Sutherland, pp. 111-12.

Snyder, pp. 461—62.

Letters, I, 115.

lbid., pp. 110-11.

lbig., p. 105.

Ibi§., p. 11.

lb;d;, p. 254.

gp;g., p. 70.

Sutherland, pp. 3-4.

Letters, II, 68.

lbig., p. 171.

Lgttggg, I, 234.

we , po 2070

 

110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.

116.
117.
118.
119.

120.
121.

122.
123.

 

Becker, p. 45.
Letters,_I, 185-86.

«Ibid., p. 54.

Edwin Muir, p. 8.

Hugh Walker, p.148.

Thomas Carlyle, 0n Heroes, Hero Worghip, and
Heroic History, p. 254.

Snyder, p. 445.

Root, p. 189.

Snyder, pp. 471-2.

Catherine Carswell, The Life of Robgrt Burns,
p. 434.

Letters, I, 230.

J. De Lancey Ferguson, “Some Aspects of the Burns
Legend," 3g, XL (1932), 270.

Lgygggg, II, 60.

lb;g., 70-2.

 

 

 

 

 

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