Robert Burns | Page 9

immortalized in such celebrated performances, while my dear
native country,--the ancient bailieries of Carrick, Kyle, and
Cunningham, famous both in ancient and modern times for a gallant
and warlike race of inhabitants--a country where civil, and particularly

religious liberty, have ever found their first support, and their last
asylum--a country, the birthplace of many famous philosophers,
soldiers, and statesmen, and the scene of many important events
recorded in Scottish history, particularly a great many of the actions of
the glorious Wallace, the saviour of his country--yet we have never had
one Scotch poet of any eminence to make the fertile banks of Irvine,
the romantic woodlands and sequestered scenes of Ayr, and the heathy
mountainous source and winding sweep of Doon, emulate Tay, Forth,
Ettrick, (p. 022) Tweed. This is a complaint I would gladly remedy; but,
alas! I am far unequal to the task, both, in native genius and in
education. Obscure I am, obscure I must be, though no young poet nor
young soldier's heart ever beat more fondly for fame than mine."
Though the sentiment here expressed may seem commonplace and the
language hardly grammatical, yet this extract clearly reveals the darling
ambition that was now haunting the heart of Burns. It was the same
wish which he expressed better in rhyme at a later day in his Epistle to
the Gude Wife of Wauchope House.
E'en then, a wish, I mind its power, A wish that to my latest hour Shall
strongly heave my breast, That I for poor Auld Scotland's sake Some
usefu' plan or beuk could make, Or sing a sang at least. The rough
burr-thistle, spreading wide Amang the bearded bear, I turn'd the
weeder-clips aside, An' spar'd the symbol dear.
It was about his twenty-fifth year when he first conceived the hope that
he might become a national poet. The failure of his first two harvests,
1784 and '85, in Mossgiel may well have strengthened this desire and
changed it into a fixed purpose. If he was not to succeed as a farmer,
might he not find success in another employment that was much more
to his mind?
And this longing so deeply cherished, he had, within less than two
years from the time that the above entry in his diary was written, amply
fulfilled. From the autumn of 1784 till May 1786 the fountains of
poetry were unsealed within, and flowed forth in a continuous stream.
That period so prolific of poetry that none like it ever (p. 023)
afterwards visited him, saw the production not only of the satirical

poems already noticed, and of another more genial satire, Death and Dr.
Hornbook, but also of those characteristic epistles in which he reveals
so much of his own character, and of those other descriptive poems in
which he so wonderfully delineates the habits of the Scottish peasantry.
Within from sixteen to eighteen months were composed, not only seven
or eight long epistles to rhyme-composing brothers in the
neighbourhood, David Sillar, John Lapraik, and others, but also,
Halloween, To a Mouse, The Jolly Beggars, The Cotter's Saturday
Night, Address to the Deil, The Auld Farmer's Address to his Auld
Mare, The Vision, The Twa Dogs, The Mountain Daisy. The descriptive
poems above named followed each other in rapid succession during
that spring-time of his genius, having been all composed, as the latest
edition of his works shows, in a period of about six months, between
November, 1785, and April, 1786. Perhaps there are none of Burns'
compositions which give the real man more naturally and unreservedly
than his epistles. Written in the dialect he had learnt by his father's
fireside, to friends in his own station, who shared his own tastes and
feelings, they flow on in an easy stream of genial happy spirits, in
which kindly humour, wit, love of the outward world, knowledge of
men, are all beautifully intertwined into one strand of poetry, unlike
anything else that has been seen before or since. The outward form of
the verse and the style of diction are no doubt after the manner of his
two forerunners whom he so much admired, Ramsay and Fergusson;
but the play of soul and power of expression, the natural grace with
which they rise and fall, the vividness of every image, (p. 024) and
transparent truthfulness of every sentiment, are all his own. If there is
any exception to be made to this estimate, it is in the grudge which here
and there peeps out against those whom he thought greater favourites of
fortune than himself and his correspondents. But taken as a whole, I
know not any poetic epistles to be compared with them. They are just
the letters in which one friend might unbosom himself to another
without the least artifice or disguise. And the