Robert Burns: DELIVERED AS A LECTURE BY W. CLARKE ROBINSON, B.Sc., M.A., Ph.D., University Extension Lecturer; Sometime Lecturer in the University of Durham, England. RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THE RT. HONOURABLE THE EARL OF ROSEBERY, K.G., &c., &c., HE history of humanity has turned largely on the T of great men may be distinguished among the superior minds of our race--I mean men of character, and men of genius. The first and commonest kind are men of prudence, patience, perseverance, and great self-control: men who direct whatever talents they possess towards one grand and all-absorbing object, until they gain the highest point in their special line, whether in politics, art, literature, business, or in leading men in peace or war. Such a man in politics was the late Lord Beaconsfield, who in his maiden speech in the House of Commons was hissed down, hissed down three times, and had only room to snatch the phrase, “Gentlemen, the time will come when I'll make you hear me!' And then, for thirty years, he sat on the Opposition benches, biding his time, educating his party, converting the country, following out his motto, "Wait" (all things come to those who can wait), till he was returned as Prime Minister of England, and in his first speech as Premier reminded the House of that earlier scene, and told them "the time had come," and he made them hear him. Such a man in literature was Thomas Carlyle, whose motto was likewise one monosyllable, "Work." You remember his letter to his brother John, when a lad "Work, my boy John, work. I swear to thee that all the miseries of this hard life, and ill-health, the most terrific of them all, shall never chain us down. By the River Styx, it shall not. Two lads from a nameless spot in show the world the pluck that is in Annandale will yet Such a man in music was Richard Wagner, who heard his methods hissed for forty years; but still he stuck to his motives, and lived to see the world listen to his symphonies with bated breath. Such a man in Church organisation was John Wesley. Such a man was he, trained in all the wisdom and learning of Egypt, the greatest statesman and general of the ages--Moses. Such a man in handling troops was the "Iron " Duke of Wellington, whose principle was "Caution." He never entered on a battle without preparing for defeat, and virtually never was defeated. And such another was he, a worthy brother of great Wellington in blood and language and religion-he, the first father of his country, who could likewise bide his time, and drill his men in the night, in the forests of Valley Forge, till he could emerge to strike the blows that made his country free-George Washington. Now, all these are great men, and types of such. These are the long-headed, square-fingered, deepthinking, practical Great Men-men of character and forethought, an honour to their country, a model to its citizens, and indispensable to the world for its stability and right government. But, on looking closer at them, we may perceive their gradual growth; we may see the footmarks by which they have ascended, and sometimes even follow in their steps. These men, in fact, become great, and are called forth by times and circumstances, aided by education and will-power. These men can be explained and imitated; these are they of whom mothers can say to their boys-" Read him, study him, follow him; he could not tell a lie.' But there is another and higher order of Great Men, to whom prudence, patience, self-control, or perseverance can but seldom be ascribed-spontaneous, undefinable beings, who only appear at long intervals, seldom twice in the history of one nation; and when they do appear, they pass us by as spirits, leaving no footprints on the hill to show us how they rose. We cannot catch the secret of their power, however closely we inquire; nor could they themselves inform us how or why they go that way. We cannot hope by dint of will or education to match or rival them, or lay them out for models, no more than we might hope to match the nightingale's sweet song. No! we can only look, and learn, and listen, and admire. These men, indeed, seem not to have ascended into light and eminence from our common clay at all, but to have descended, to have been let down halfway to earth by the great Master Spirit, dangled for a time before the wondering eyes of a generation that understood them not, and then again mysteriously withdrawn to their own higher sphere. These men shine not with the borrowed lights of education and experience. Born without ancestry, dying without offspring of any note, and usually dying young, with passions strong as death, they conform in nothing to the ordinary type, they break all previous records, and are henceforth a law unto themselves, and an inspiration to all future times. They feed us with the milk of human kindness; they warm us and make our blood to glow with the breath of that celestial fire of which they are themselves an emanation and a part. Of such men, indeed, this world has known but few. We are too prodigal of the title "genius," but these men are geniuses born: men who make circumstances, create epochs, have schools founded in their name. Such a man in warfare was the First Napoleon, who with a flash of his eagle eye could rally his retreating legions and clench the fate of nations in an hour. Such a man in music was Mozart, who, when under nine years old, composed and played divine, inimitable sonatas, which the most learned professors of the art could then scarcely comprehend. Such a man in painting was Raphael, whose angelface revealed at once his heavenly soul. Such a man in statesmanship was he, the second father of his country, who alone, in a night, unadvised, or contrary to all advice, when he felt impulsively the time had come, could dare to wrench a constitution and break the fetters of a dusky race-Abraham Lincoln. Such a man in literature was the incomprehensible William Shakspere. Such another was that impassioned singer from the sheepfolds of Judea-the royal minstrel, David. And to this same class of men of " genius born," men of boundless sympathy and unexplainable inspiration, belongs the subject of this discourse-the poet, Robert Burns. Over one hundred editions of his works have been already published, and thousands of biographies and essays have told their story of this Scottish ploughman to the world, trying to explain his marvellous appearance in the realm of letters, and his sad career in a cold and heartless age. Born January 25, 1759, in a two-roomed clay cottage some two miles from Ayr, on the west coast of Scotland, Burns had a rough welcome into this world, and a rougher journey through it. A storm blew down the cot shortly after his birth, and the feeble mother, with her new-born babe, had to be carried in the dark hours of morning to the shelter of a neighbouring roof. Burns was cradled by the northern winds, and rocked on the cold clay floor. His parents, William and Agnes Burns, were pious, rigorous, hard-worked Scottish peasants, who read their Bible and kept the Sabbath day. Indeed, they had little else to keep! (I think it was the poet himself, or some other wit, who said it was no wonder the Scotch lived long and died rich, because they honoured their parents and kept the Sabbath day-and everything else they could lay their hands on!) The seven barren acres of William Burns's farm held the family in a state of semistarvation, and in constant fear of ejectment. Robert, the eldest, had to do the work of man from his thirteenth year, labouring in field or barn, sometimes fifteen hours a day! For some months he attended a country school, where he was one of the dullest in the class, and his ear could not distinguish one tune of music from another. By the blinking light of a peat fire in his father's kitchen he managed to snatch some scraps of learning from the writings of Fergusson and Ramsay, Shakspere and Locke. But it was not books, it was not schools-it was human nature, human love, that first unsealed the sacred fount of song in the hard-worked body of this hitherto dull boy. This fount of song was suddenly unsealed in his fifteenth year in his efforts to reveal his passion for the bonny girl who shared his labours on the harvest rig. He says:-"I cannot tell why I liked to loiter behind her when returning from our labours in the field; but the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Æolian harp, and my pulse beat at a furious rate when I lingered o'er her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle stings and thistles. How she caught the contagion I cannot tell; but, unwittingly to herself, she initiated me into that delicious passion which, in spite of acid disappointment and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys on earth. It was her favourite reel I attempted to embody in my earliest rhymes. My girl sang a song composed by a country laird, and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he. Thus with me began love and poetry together." (And they kept pretty close company to the end!) This song, to his "Handsome Nell," was the first he ever wrote-in his fifteenth year. It contains some tolerable stanzas, such as: " She dresses, aye, sae clean and neat, And then, there's something in her gait Up to his 22nd year Burns saw nothing of the great world outside the neighbouring farms. And only on two important occasions in his life was he brought into contact with the big world's ways-with the bad as well as the good, with the vulgar and low as well as the high and refined. His first free contact with the outside world was at the seaport town of Irvine, in 1781; his second outing was five years afterwards, at Edinburgh, in 1786. His year at Irvine, where he went to learn the trade of flaxdressing, was passed among a low and boisterous set of smugglers and sailors; his year at Edinburgh was passed among the lords and magnates of the capital. I do not think that year in Edinburgh did him any good; and certainly the greatest mistake in his |