CHAPTER II. Burns compared with Gray and other poets.-Opinions as to his poetry of Lord Lytton, Wordsworth, Byron, Crabbe, Pitt.His generosity.-Despondency.-Visit to Edinburgh, and Address to it.--Tours in Scotland.--Clarinda. Marriage.-Poems to his bride.-Ellisland.-Social habits of the age.-Cunningham's description of Burns.-His method of Composition.The poetical temperament.-Letter to Mrs. Dunlop.-Notices of him by Mr. Gray and Mr. Ramsay.-Religious sentiments. Concluding remarks. 66 URNS overrated the poems of Ossian; he also considered Gray and Shenstone to be models whom he could not aspire to equal. The best judges now estimate very differently the comparative merits of those English poets and the Scottish bard. Lord Lytton wrote of Burns, that although "conscious "of the influences which formed him into a poet, he was unable to tell how he trained his genius into art; "yet an artist he indisputably was, and it is astonishing "how marvellously correct, both in__details and as wholes, most of his writings are. He is one of the "most correct poets that the world has known. In his smallest pieces the conception is thoroughly carried "out; in his easiest lines there is never a word too "much nor too little; his simplicity has in it the best characteristics of Grecian art. He is a poet for critics, "and those songs which seem to gush so spontaneously "from the fervid heart of the writer, would furnish the "severest lecturer with his happiest illustrations of "classical concinnity and completeness. 66 24 LORD LYTTON'S OPINION. "That Burns was a great genius every one knows, "but the world has been too apt to consider him, as "the world once held Shakspere, to be somewhat rude "and careless, and his energy is more conceded than "his skill. Yet, if a judicious reader were to take the "trouble of comparing some of the most familiar of his "stanzas with the most elaborate lines of the polished "Pope, or the fastidious Gray, it would be found that "the merit of superior correctness would, in nine cases out of ten, be awarded to Burns. Gray is, "indeed, one of the most inaccurate, precisely because one of the most artificial of poets. Of this the "melodious opening of his greatest and most careful "poem affords an example— 66 66 'The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea; 'Now fades the glimmering landscape,' &c. "That we may not appear hypercritical for the sake of "our own argument, we will borrow, with some abridg"ment, the shrewd and sound observations that we find "in the appendix of the edition we now review. The "curfew tolls-1st. The word toll is not the appropriate "verb-the curfew-bell was not a slow bell tolling for "the dead; 2ndly.-Long before the curfew tolled the "ploughman had wended his way homeward; 3rdly."The day was not parting, when the curfew tolled it "had long since parted; 4thly.-If the world were left "to darkness in one line, how happens it, first, that in "the very next line, the glimmering landscape fades?" and, secondly, that we are almost immediately after"wards told that the moping owl is complaining to the "moon?' These are not mere verbal criticisms; they "are proofs that the writer is incorrect in his whole "picture, because he does not portray what he is seeing, "or has seen; he is heaping together incongruous. LORD LYTTON'S OPINION. 25 ,, images about evening, collected from books, and ,, compiled in a study. The incorrectness is equally perceptible in the whole as in the details. 66 "It was but rarely that Gray followed Sir Philip Sidney's advice, to look in his heart and write.' "But in Burns, inferior as was his education, imperfect his knowledge of the square and measure of "the architects of verse, the wording is accurate, the "picture complete, because, faithful to nature and to "truth, he is uttering simply what he has observed, or "expressing passionately what he has felt; and criticism. "dies without a sign upon his descriptions of nature, or his revelations of sentiment. 66 "In fact, as moral error consists partly in viewing "only a portion of the truth, partly in want of faith as "to the rest of the truth that it cannot discover, so in"correctness, which is the moral error of the poet, "arises from a meagre experience, or from a lukewarm "imagination. Hence that poet is, in the proper and "scientific sense of the word, the most correct, who "combines the greatest acuteness of actual observation "with the most vivifying power of creative enthusiasm. "Yet Gray was a great poet, though his faults lie "precisely in the quarter whence his merits have been 'vulgarly drawn. He was not an accurate writer, and "in the larger and purer sense of the epithet, he was "not a classical one; he was not classical, for he had "neither the faith, the simplicity, nor the independent "originality which constitute the characteristics of the "poets of Greece. Learned he was, but the classical poets were not learned. Pindar's rapture never lived "in the lyre of Gray, for Gray never knew what the rapture of poesy is. 66 66 Painfully and minutely laborious, diffident of his "own powers, weighing words in a balance, borrowing "a thought here, and a phrase there, Gray wrote English as he wrote Latin. It was a dead language to 26 BURNS AND GRAY COMPARED. "him, in which he sought to acquire an elegant' pro"ficiency by using only the epithets and the phrases "rendered orthodox by the best models. But he was "no vulgar plagiarist-his very deficiency of invention. "became productive of a beauty peculiarly his own, "and created a kind of poetry of association; so that "in reading Gray we are ever haunted with a delightful "and vague reminiscence of the objects of a former "admiration or love, as early things and thoughts that are recalled to us by some exquisite air of music, and "in some place most congenial to dream-like recol"lections of grace and beauty."-Lord Lytton's Miscellaneous Prose Works. Gray, in short with much learning and cultivated taste, has reproduced from the calm contemplative study of the most approved models, works highly and beautifully artificial." But Burns excels him and many other poets, because while he diligently studied the best models within his reach, he had abundantly the creative power of a great poet, strong feelings and passions, exquisite sensibility, and a keen perception of the beautiful in nature and in sentiment, from which he drew the rich material of his art. He went to books for lessons in taste and culture, but he went direct to the natural and moral world around him for inspiration, "I am nae Poet, in a sense, But just a Rhymer like, by chance, An' hae to learning nae pretence Whene'er my Yet, what the matter? Your critic-folk may cock their nose, But, by your leave, my learned foes, GRAPHIC POWER OF BURNS. Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire My Muse, though hamely in attire, 27 Whoever has watched a stream, as poet, sketcher or angler, or as a loving careful observer of river scenery, must be struck with the graphic power with which Burns describes such scenes, and with his skilful use of his native tongue as in Halloween, and as in the ode to "Mary in Heaven," in pure English, and how in that pathetic lay of love he does touch the heart. "Ayr, gurgling kissed his pebbled shore, O'erhung with wild woods thick'ning green, Twined am'rous round the raptured scene." And in "Halloween," the brook seen by moonlight meandering through the glen, falling over or winding round a rock in eddies and pools, gliding and coyly hiding under braes like a living creature Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, Unseen that night." Campbell is another of our standard writers, and Wilson said to Wordsworth he thought these lines in the "Pleasures of Hope" were magnificent |