28 COMPARED WITH CAMPBELL "Lo to the wintry winds the Pilot yields, Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world." And so you think this magnificent. What has a giant to do with a star, and tell me what is the meaning of a meteor standard to the winds unfurled. Take the book and read, for I cannot understand it. And Christopher North, poet and critic, soon threw down. the book and said, neither can I understand it! There is a great deal of magnificent nonsense, which read superficially may pass for poetry, especially under the shelter of a great name which Campbell had and deserved. There is a phrase, "neither rhyme nor reason; "rhyme without reason is just as common. It would seem that more may be said about this magnificent passage than occurred to the two poets during their table talk. Lord Byron wrote grandly "Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains, On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds Suppose he had written Alps is the monarch of mountains-Pyrenees is the monarch of mountains. The Andes or the Cordilleras is a chain of many mountains, extending 4,500 miles along the coast of the Pacific ocean, a multitudinous giant. Chimborazo is the giant of the Andes, but that did not suit the rhyme to which therefore reason and geography were sacrificed by poetical license. The meteor-standard of Campbell was a Will o' the Wisp which misled that justly admired poet on more than one occasion. What a noble ode is Hohenlinden, heroic in the highest degree, and deeply pathetic; and DESCRIPTIONS ACCORDING TO NATURE 29 "Ye mariners of England" must often have kindled the courage of our brave sailors on the stormy deep, “ With thunders from her native oak, She quells the floods below," is rather out of date in this iron age; no blame, however, to the poet, But what are we to say of "The meteor flag of England, Sailing down the Rhine at midnight in 1844, we saw a meteor swiftly traverse our course, so brilliant as to light up every object on deck, and then quickly vanish. But for the Union Jack to burn and blaze away in that fashion; was ever such a thing imagined by our jack tars when they cheered those words, and thought them magnificent.. I remember two wonderful lines in a poem on the battle of Waterloo, published soon after the event; the fame of its author was evanescent as a meteor, but never so brilliant "And thou Dalhousie, thou great God of war, Mars, instead of being Lieutenant Colonel of Mar, ought at least to have been Field-Marshal and Generalissimo of the army; but we preferred the Duke of Wellington. Burns never committed those meteoric and metaphoric blunders, for he looked "on fair nature's face" not through the spectacles of books, but with a true poet's eye. The philosophic poet Wordsworth, when he saw from Mossgiel the grand view of the Frith of Clyde, bounded by the peaks of Arran, thought it remarkable that with that daily prospect before his eyes, "during much the most productive period of his "poetical life, Burns nowhere adverts to it." Indeed he beheld the same scenery from infancy from the 30 OPINIONS OF BYRON, CRABBE, PITT. shore between the Ayr and Doon rivers, and the surrounding country. Wordsworth offers this explanation of the fact: "It is as a human being eminently 66 66 sensitive and intelligent, and not as a poet clad in his "priestly robes, and carrying the ensigns of sacerdotal "office that he interests and affects us. Whether he 'speaks of rivers, hills and woods, it is not so much on "account of the properties with which they are absolutely endowed as relatively to local patriotic remem'brances and associations, or as they are ministerial "to personal feelings, especially those of love, whether happy or otherwise; yet it is not always so." Byron said that “undoubtedly he was in the first class "in his art," and the son and biographer of Crabbe, that his father was "ever as enthusiastic an admirer "of Burns as the warmest of his own countrymen," and Mr. Lockhart states that Mr. Pitt at Lord Liverpool's table, said that he could think of no verse since Shakspere's that had so much the appearance of coming sweetly from nature as his. Burns also resembled Shakespere in his various knowledge of mankind. Born and bred among the people, he learned to know human nature in that condition, familiar with their thoughts, feelings, habits and manners. But his eminent gifts, improved by observation and study, gave him access to other conditions of life; as the chosen companion of the most distinguished men of his country, and of ladies of rank and beauty, intelligent and accomplished, to whom his conversation was an attraction and a delight. Withal, he was a noble, generous, and independent man, scorning flattery and the fulsome dedications of former poets. "No mercenary bard his homage pays," was with him a fixed principle, carried perhaps to an extreme, considering his small and hardly earned income. For while he purified the old songs of Scotland from their dross and defilement, and gratuitously supplied Mr. George Thomson's collection of Scottish airs, accompanied by words with about sixty of his own matchless songs, he often distributed among his friends in manuscript. TAM O'SHANTER-COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. 31 those poems which have as much of immortality as belongs to earthly things; so that his friend Dr. Moore warned him against the practice, some of them having appeared in print before they were published by himself. "Tam O'Shanter," his favourite work, to which other literary men and the public have given their approval for original humour and graphic power of the highest order, he presented to Captain Grose to be published in his "Antiquities," modestly asking a few copies of the proof sheets for himself and his friends, and that the poem should be accompanied with an engraving of "Alloway's auld haunted Kirk.” Mr. Lockhart wrote that the "Cotter's Saturday Night" could least of all be spared from the poems of Burns, and it may be said that the scenes it describes could least be spared from his life. A hard but noble struggle with adversity was the venerable father's lot, and his children shared it. Robert, when a boy of fifteen, worked like a man, and so injured his strong constitution as to cause palpitation of the heart, sleeplessness, and deep melancholy. The wages of the sons were only seven pounds a year, and as they never spent more, strict frugality and temperance and virtuous self denial were invariably practised by the poet till his twenty-third year. It was during their seven year's residence at Tarbolton, after leaving the cottage at Alloway, that Gilbert most admired his gifted brother. Unspotted by the world, he was more cheerful and animated, and his conversation, abounding in good sense and shrewd observation, enlivened by wit and humour, made him a charming companion and beguiled the toilsome hours. In the summer of 1784, the state of his health was alarming to others and to himself. He had fainting fits at night, caused by irregular action of the heart, and his severe remedy was to rise from bed and plunge into a barrel of cold water. At that time he wrote the following: 32 66 STANZAS IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH. STANZAS IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH.* 'Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene! Have I so found it full of pleasing charms? Some drops of joy with draughts of ill between; Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms; Is it departing pangs my soul alarms ? Or death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode ? For guilt, for guilt, my terrors are in arms; I tremble to approach an angry God, And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod. Fain would I say, 'Forgive my foul offence!' Again exalt the brute, and sink the man; Who act so counter Heav'nly mercy's plan? Who sin so oft have mourn'd, yet to temptation ran? O Thou, great Governor of all below! If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee, Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, With that controlling pow'r assist ev'n me, For all unfit I feel my powers to be, To rule their torrent in th' allowed line; At this anxious time he was kindly and hospitably entertained at the manse of the Rev. George Laurie, Minister of the Parish of Loudon, a few miles from Mossgiel. Mr. Laurie, a man of cultivated taste, the friend of the blind poet, Dr. Blacklock, and of Dr. * August, 1784. Misgivings in the hour of Despondency and Prospect of Death. |