The Real Robert Burns. James L. Hughes
development of Burns and of Mrs. Browning. In Aurora Leigh, the record of her own growth, she describes her true education, although not her actual life’s history. Aurora loses her mother in her fifth year, and lives with her father for nine great years near Florence; she says:
So nine full years our days were hid with God
Among His mountains. I was just thirteen,
Still growing like a plant from unseen roots
In tongue-tied springs; and suddenly awoke
To full life, and life’s needs and agonies,
With an intense, strong, struggling heart beside
A stone-dead father. Life struck sharp on death
Makes awful lightning.
Her years till thirteen are spent mainly in her father’s fine library reading what she most loved of the treasuries of the world. Her own statement of her father’s educational guidance is:
My father taught me what he had learnt the best
Before he died, and left me—grief and love;
And seeing we had books among the hills,
Strong words of counselling souls, confederate
With vocal pines and waters, out of books
He taught me all the ignorance of men,
And how God laughs in heaven when any man
Says, ‘Here I’m learned; this I understand;
In that I’m never caught at fault or doubt.’
Like Burns she reads good books with joyous interest; like Burns she has a father deeply interested in her education who teaches her vital things; and like Burns she loves to learn from the ‘vocal pines and waters,’ and finds her richest revelations for her mind ‘with God among His mountains.’
The hills of Ayrshire, the rivers, and the river-glens, whose sides are covered with beautiful trees, were to Burns kindlers of high ideals, and revealers of God.
CHAPTER III.
The Characteristics of Burns.
He was a truly independent democrat. The love of liberty was the basic element of his character. His fundamental philosophy he expressed in the unanswered and unanswerable questions:
Why should ae man better fare,
And a’ men brothers?
Epistle to Dr. Blacklock.
If I’m designed yon lordling’s slave,
By Nature’s law designed,
Why was an independent wish
E’er planted in my mind?
Man was Made to Mourn.
To the Right Hon. John Francis Erskine he wrote: ‘The partiality of my countrymen has brought me forward as a man of genius, and has given me a character to support. In the Poet I have avowed manly and independent sentiments, which I trust will be found in the Man.’
Referring to the fact that his father’s family rented land from the ‘famous, noble Keiths,’ and had the honour of sharing their fate—their estates were forfeited because they took part in the rebellion of 1715—he says: ‘Those who dare welcome Ruin and shake hands with Infamy, for what they believe sincerely to be the cause of their God and their King, are—as Mark Antony in Shakespeare says of Brutus and Cassius—“Honourable men.” ’
Though his father was not born in 1715, he undoubtedly got from his family the principles of independence and the love of liberty which he afterwards taught to his sons, and which Robert propagated with so much zeal.
In a letter to Mrs. Dunlop he wrote: ‘Light be the turf upon his breast who taught, “Reverence thyself.” ’
To Lord Glencairn, after expressing his gratitude, he said: ‘My gratitude is not selfish design—that I disdain; it is not dodging after the heel of greatness—that is an offering you disdain. It is a feeling of the same kind with my devotion.’
In many of his letters he expresses the same sentiments. In his Epistle to his young friend, Andrew Aiken, he advises him, among other things,
To gather gear by every wile
That’s justified by honor;
Not for to hide it in a hedge,
Nor for a train attendant;
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent.
In a letter to Mr. William Dunbar, dealing with his consciousness of his responsibility for his children, he wrote, 1790: ‘I know the value of independence; and since I cannot give my sons an independent fortune, I shall give them an independent line of life.’
Writing to Mrs. Dunlop about his son—her god-son—Burns said: ‘I am myself delighted with the manly swell of his little chest, and a certain miniature dignity in the carriage of the head, and the glance of his fine black eye, which promise the undaunted gallantry of an independent mind.’
In ‘A Man’s a Man for a’ That’ he says:
Ye see yon birkie, ca’d ‘a lord,’
Wha struts, and stares, and a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that. blockhead
For a’ that, and a’ that,
His ribband, star, and a’ that,
The man o’ independent mind
He looks and laughs at a’ that.
In the same great poem he crystallises a fundamental truth in the immortal couplet:
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that. gold
To Mrs. Dunlop he wrote in 1787: ‘I trust I have too much pride for servility, and too little prudence for selfishness.’
To Mrs. M’Lehose he wrote in 1788: ‘The dignifying and dignified consciousness of an honest man, and the well-grounded trust in approving heaven, are two most substantial foundations of happiness.’
To Mrs. Dunlop he wrote in 1788: ‘Two of my adored household gods are independence of spirit and integrity of soul.’
To Mrs. Graham he wrote in 1791: ‘May my failings ever be those of a generous heart and an independent mind.’
To John Francis Erskine he wrote in 1793: ‘My independent British mind oppression might bend, but could not subdue.’
In the ‘Vision’ the message he says he received from Coila, the genius of Kyle, the part of Ayrshire in which he was born, was:
Preserve the dignity of Man, with soul erect.
Burns has been criticised for meddling with what his critics called politics. The highest messages Christ gave to the world were the value of the individual soul, and brotherhood based on the unity of developed individual souls. His highest messages were understood by Burns more clearly than by any one else during his time, and Burns was too great a man to be untrue to his greatest visions. His poems are still among the best interpretations of Christ’s ideals of democracy and brotherhood.
The supreme aim of Burns was to secure for all men and women freedom from the unnatural restrictions of class or custom, so that each individual