MRS RIDDEL'S SKETCH OF BURNS. 215 sallies of enthusiastic patriotism. The keenness of satire was, I am almost at a loss whether to say his forte or his foible; for though nature had endowed him with a portion of the most pointed excellence in that dangerous talent, he suffered it too often to be the vehicle of personal, and sometimes unfounded, animosities. It was not always that sportiveness of humour, that unwary pleasantry," which Sterne has depicted with touches so conciliatory, but the darts of ridicule were frequently directed as the caprice of the instant suggested, or as the altercations of parties and of persons happened to kindle the restlessness of his spirit into interest or aversion. This, however, was not invariably the case; his wit (which is no unusual matter indeed) had always the start of his judgment, and would lead him to the indulgence of raillery uniformly acute, but often unaccompanied with the least desire to wound. The suppression of an arch and full-pointed bon-mot, from a dread of offending its object, the sage of Zurich very properly classes as a virtue only to be sought for in the calendar of saints; if so, Burns must not be too severely dealt with for being rather deficient in it. He paid for his mischievous wit as dearly as any one could do. ""Twas no extravagant arithmetic," to say of him, as was said of Yorick, that "for every ten jokes he got a hundred enemies;" but much allowance will be made by a candid mind for the splenetic warmth of a spirit whom "distress had spited with the world," and which, unbounded in its intellectual sallies and pursuits, continually experienced the curbs imposed by the waywardness of his fortune. The vivacity of his wishes and temper was indeed checked by almost habitual disappointments, which sat heavy on a heart that acknowledged the ruling passion of independence, without having ever been placed beyond the grasp of penury. His soul was never languid or inactive, and his genius was extinguished only with the last spark of retreating life. His passions rendered him, according as they disclosed themselves in affection or antipathy, an object of enthusiastic attachment, or of decided enmity; for he possessed none of that negative insipidity of character, whose love might be regarded with indifference, or whose resentment could be considered with contempt. In this, it should seem, the temper of his associates took the tincture from his own; for he acknowledged in the universe but two classes of objects-those of adoration the most fervent, or of aversion the most uncontrollable; and it has been frequently a reproach to him, that, unsusceptible of indifference, often hating where he ought only to have despised, he alternately opened his heart and poured forth the treasures of his understanding to such as were incapable of appreciating the homage, and elevated to the privileges of an adversary some who were unqualified in all respects for the honour of a contest so distinguished. 'It is said that the celebrated Dr Johnson professed to "love a good hater"-a temperament that would have singularly adapted him to cherish a prepossession in favour of our bard, who perhaps fell but little short even of the surly doctor in this qualification, as long as the disposition to ill-will continued; but the warmth of his passions was fortunately corrected by their versatility. He was seldom, indeed never, implacable in his resentments, and sometimes, it has been alleged, not inviolably faithful in his engagements of friendship. Much, indeed, has been said about his inconstancy and caprice; but I am inclined to believe, that they originated less in a levity of sentiment, than from an extreme impetuosity of feeling, which rendered him prompt to take umbrage; and his sensations of pique, where he fancied he had discovered the traces of neglect, scorn, or unkindness, took their measure of asperity from the overflowings of the opposite sentiment which preceded them, and which seldom failed to regain its ascendancy in his bosom on the return of calmer reflection. He was candid and manly in the avowal of his errors, and his avowal was a reparation. His native fierté never forsaking him for a moment, the value of a frank acknowledgment was enhanced tenfold towards a generous mind, from its never being attended with servility. His mind, organised only for the stronger and more acute operations of the passions, was impracticable to the efforts of superciliousness that would have depressed it into humility, and equally superior to the encroachments of venal suggestions that might have led him into the mazes of hypocrisy. . . . That Burns had received no classical education, and was acquainted with the Greek and Roman authors only through the medium of translations, is a fact of which all who were in the habit of conversing with him might readily be convinced. I have, indeed, seldom observed him to be at a loss in conversation, unless where the dead languages and their writers have been the subjects of discussion. When I have pressed him to tell me why he never applied himself to acquire the Latin, in particular, a language which his happy memory would have so soon enabled him to be master of, he used only to reply with a smile, that he had already learnt all the Latin he desired to know, and that was omnia vincit amor-a sentence, that from his writings and most favourite pursuits, it should undoubtedly seem that he was most thoroughly versed in; but I really believe his classic erudition extended little if any further.' Mrs Riddel acknowledged the imputed irregularities of Burns, but pled that 'the eccentric intuitions of genius too often yield CHARACTER OF BURNS. 217 the soul to the wild effervescence of desires, always unbounded, and sometimes equally dangerous to the repose of others as dangerous to its own. . . . . I trust,' she says in conclusion, 'that honest fame will be permanently affixed to Burns's character, which I think it will be found he has merited by the candid and impartial among his countrymen. And where a recollection of the imprudences that sullied his brighter qualifications interposes, let the imperfection of all human excellence be remembered at the same time, leaving those inconsistencies, which alternately exalted his nature into the seraph and sank it again into the man, to the tribunal which alone can investigate the labyrinths of the human heart "Where they alike in trembling hope repose- Mrs Riddel's prediction has certainly been verified, for an honest fame, and something more, does now attach to the memory of Robert Burns. It is many years since any open attempt has been made to vilify the peasant bard on any account whatever, and it is abundantly clear, that no such attempt will ever again be made by any man who wishes to stand well with the Scottish public; for whatever sectarian views may sway, or whatever prudish feelings intrude, no man amongst us can endure that the shadow of the fame of Burns, personal or literary, should ever be made less. The danger is now, indeed, not that Burns may be under-estimated or calumniated, but that the affection in which his memory is held, may interfere with even the most friendly attempts to set forth the lights and shadows of his character with historic fidelity. On a narrow and critical examination of the life and conduct of our great poet, and thus getting quit of the almost mythic gloss which already invests it, we do not find either that garreteerlike poverty which is usually associated with his name, or that tendency to excessive or wild irregularity which has been imputed to him. Burns was cut short by an accidental disease in the midst of a life, humble indeed compared with his deserts, but one attended with no essential privations, not to any serious extent distressing to his spirit, and not unhopeful. A very short time before his death, he is found looking cheerfully forward to promotion in the branch of public service to which he had attached himself; and it may be added, if he had lived a few years longer, and attained the expected promotion, his situation would have been one far from despicable. In his official conduct, Burns, it fully appears, 1 Mrs Walter Riddel gave material assistance to Dr Currie in his task as biographer and editor of Burns. displayed diligence and accuracy. He behaved himself much more like a man of the world than is generally supposed. The charges against him on the score of intemperance have been proved to be greatly exaggerated. He was only the occasional boon-companion, never the dram-drinker or the sot; and his aberrations in this line were those of the age, not his own. There remains, indeed, one serious frailty at the charge of Burns. It has been spoken of here with candour, lest, in the event of its being slurred over, an exaggerated idea of it should be entertained. It certainly was much to be deplored; and yet we must see that it was connected and inwrought with the peculiar poetical power which he possessed, a power of which, apparently, we should not have had the benefits on cheaper terms.1 We may pronounce, therefore, against the sin, and deplore the humiliation into which it brought so noble a genius; but we must at the same time remember, that the light which led astray was in him truly 'a light from heaven.' If Burns had lived ten years longer, we should have seen him surmounting the turbid wave of passion, and atoning for many of his errors. Let us give him the benefit of this ideal amendment. There, after all, was a defect in Burns which no number of years would have ever enabled him to remedy, and this was his want of a vigorous will. Thomas Carlyle, after writing most generously of Burns, has been carried so far in his ardent admiration as to say, that no other man was so well entitled to be at the head of the public affairs of his day, as if his being so peculiarly a man of talent fitted him above all rivalry for that eminent situation. There could not be a greater mistake, for how could 1 'by his own hand-in words the import of which cannot be mistakenit has been recorded that the order of his life but faintly corresponded with the clearness of his views. It is probable that he could have proved a still greater poet if, by strength of reason, he could have controlled the propensities which his sensibilities engendered; but he would have been a poet of a different class: and, certain it is, had that desirable restraint been early established, many peculiar beauties which enrich his verse would never have existed, and many accessory influences which contribute greatly to their effect would have been wanting. For instance, the momentous truth of the passage, "One point must still be greatly dark," &c., could not have possibly been conveyed with such pathetic force by any poet that ever lived, speaking in his own voice; unless it were felt that, like Burns, he was a man who preached from the text of his own errors; and whose wisdom, beautiful as a flower that might have risen from seed sown from above, was in fact a scion from the root of personal suffering. Whom did the poet intend should be thought of occupying that grave over which, after modestly setting forth the moral discernment and warm affections of its "poor inhabitant below," it is supposed to be inscribed that "Thoughtless follies laid him low, Who but himself-himself anticipating the too probable termination of his own course? Here is a sincere and solemn avowal-a public declaration from his own will-a confession at once devout, poetical, and human-a history in the shape of a prophecy!'-WORDSWORTH. a man, who was unable to exercise a control upon his own passions in the simplest things, have ever been able to exercise the control upon himself and others which is necessary in the great statesman? The general abilities of Burns were no doubt extraordinary; but it is perfectly clear, that the poetical temperament ruled in his nature. He was impressionable, irritable, capricious. Whatever he did that was brilliant, he did under impulse. He only reflected when it was too late. Minds like his have their own mission; but it is not to sway great democracies. It is to touch the souls of men with their fine sensibilities, and give an imperishable voice to the subtlest emotions of their bosoms. In studying such minds, we are not to expect calm and regulated movement, as of some machine perfect in all its parts, and which has certain definite purposes to serve. It is not of that active character at all. We are rather to look for some passive thing like the Æolian harp, which has a hundred moods in an hour. Such, truly, is the Poet; and it must ever be a fearful problem, how such a being is to stand towards the rest of society, how he is to get his living, and how he is to observe one-half of the sober maxims of conventional life. As a poet, Burns is not of course to be ranked with any of the higher denominations. He competes not with the Homers or the Miltons; scarcely even with the Drydens or Popes. But he stands in a very noble rank by himself, as one who treated with unapproached felicity all the sensuous familiar things which lay around him in the world. It may be said, that he is happy in the treating of these things in a great measure by reason of his singular command of language. Whatever idea was within him, there was a channel of expression for it, by which it came out in full and true lineaments, and without a single sacrifice to rant, or trick, or the exigencies of verse. The possession of this language-power, Horatian as it was, would have never of itself made a great poet; but it, and the fruitful mind together, conferred an advantage which there was no resisting. When we seek to ascertain what it is in the thoughts and feelings of Burns which pleases us so much, we find that it mainly is their unaffected simplicity and naïveté. He was the true man before he was the true poet. To be so entirely free of a tedious literalness, he is the most faithful of painters. The emotions of a liberal genial nature flow from him, and we all feel that it is a voice which admirably represents his kind. There is never any pause for an expletive ornament. Art is completely concealed in his case, simply because he wrote the ideas as they naturally rose and came, and not with any secondary view to effect. Thus he is the least egotistic of poets, for even where he worships some female divinity of his own, he does it in the words which all would |