[104]
My Peggy’s face, my Peggy’s form,
The frost of hermit14 age might warm;
My Peggy’s worth, my Peggy’s mind,
Might charm the first of human kind.
I love my Peggy’s angel air,
Her face so truly, heavenly fair,
Her native grace so void of art;
But I adore my Peggy’s heart.
Not to put too fine a point upon it, this is arrant15 drivel, villainously rhymed. Then comes Up in the Morning Early:
Up in the morning’s no’ for me,
Up in the morning early;
When a’ the hills are cover’d wi’ snaw,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly.
Cauld blaws the wind frae east to west,
The drift is driving sairly;
Sae loud and shrill’s I hear the blast,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly.
The birds sit chittering in the thorn,
A’ day they fare but sparely;
And lang’s the night frae e’en to morn,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly.
One surmises16 Up in the Morning Early belongs to “that great body of treasurable songs with which Burns has dowered his countrymen.” On the face of it, to find sorrier stuff one would have to visit an English[105] music hall. There is not a glimmer17 of poetry in any one of the twelve lines, and the composition as a whole might have been written by a precocious18 infant in a Glasgow Board School. After this precious production we are regaled with the appended touching19 piece of sentimentalism:
Tho’ cruel fate should bid us part,
As far’s the pole and line;
Her dear idea round my heart
Should tenderly entwine.
Tho’ mountains frown and deserts howl,
And oceans roar between;
Yet, dearer than my deathless soul,
I still would love my Jean.
The spectacle of a gentleman having somebody’s “dear idea” entwined, whether tenderly or otherwise, round his heart would surely set a cat laughing. And the loving of Jean, though mountains frown and deserts howl and oceans roar between, is clearly the merest fustian20. Follows I Dreamed I Lay Where Flowers were Springing—a stupid sort of dream to say the least of it. The flowers,[106] it seems, were springing “gaily in the sunny beam,” and the poet, it seems, not only “dreamed that he lay among them” but, that he was “list’ning to the wild birds singing by a falling crystal stream,” which is a very common and hackneyed thing for a tenth-rate poet to do. But mark:
Straight the sky grew black and daring;
Thro’ the woods the whirlwinds rave12;
Trees with aged21 arms were warring,
O’er the swelling22, drumlie wave.
Such was my life’s deceitful morning,
Such the pleasures I enjoy’d;
But lang or noon, loud tempests storming
A’ my flowery bliss23 destroy’d.
Tho’ fickle24 fortune has deceived me,
She promised fair, and performed but ill;
Of monie a joy and hope bereav’d me,
I bear a heart shall support me still.
The moral here is as lame25 as the meter, and in the open market to-day the “poem” is not worth fourpence. We finish the page with Bonie Ann:
Ye gallants bright, I red you right,
Beware of bonie Ann:
Her comely26 face sae fu’ o’ grace,
Your heart she will trepan.
[107]
Her een sae bright, like stars by night,
Her skin is like the swan;
Sae jimpy lac’d her genty waist,
That sweetly ye might span.
Youth, grace, and love, attendant move,
And pleasure leads the van;
In a’ their charms, and conquering arms,
They wait on bonie Ann.
The captive bands may chain the hands,
But love enslaves the man:
Ye gallants braw, I red you a’
Beware of bonie Ann.
One notes that three out of these five lucubrations have to do with love, and one wonders how a man who went about with such ill-considered love-verses in his pocket ever got a woman to look at him.
To take our life in our hands once more, we open on page 153. Here we have a choice selection of short pieces, and feeble, which we reproduce as they stand:
TO JOHN M’MURDO, Esq.
O, could I give thee India’s wealth,
As I this trifle send!
Because thy joy in both would be
To share them with a friend.
But golden sands did never grace
The Heliconean stream;
Then take what gold could never buy—
An honest Bard’s esteem27.
[108]
ON THE DEATH OF A LAP-DOG, NAMED ECHO
In wood and wild, ye warbling throng28,
Your heavy loss deplore29;
Now half-extinct your powers of song,
Sweet Echo is no more.
Ye jarring, screeching30 things around,
Scream your discordant31 joys;
Now half your din3 of tuneless sound
With Echo silent lies.
LINES WRITTEN AT LOUDEN MANSE
The night was still, and o’er the hill
The moon shone on the castle wa’;
The mavis sang, while dew-drops hang
Around her on the castle wa’.
Sae merrily they danced the ring,
Frae eenin’ till the cock did craw;
And the o’erword o’ the spring,
Was Irvine’s bairns are bonie a’.
These three effusions, dear reader, are really and truly the work of Burns—or, if you prefer it, of Burrrrrns. In despair one hunts up something for which the man is noted32. Scots Wha Hae one thinks, will serve. It has been described as noble, and marvellous, and inspiring, and Heaven knows what besides. Here it is:
[109]
Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,
Scots whom Bruce has often led;
Welcome to your gory33 bed
Or to victorie!
Now’s the day, and now’s the hour,
See the front o’ battle lour,
See approach proud Edward’s power—
Chains and slaverie!
Wha will be a traitor35 knave36?
Wha can fill a coward’s grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?—
Let him turn and flee!
Wha for Scotland’s king and law
Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand or freeman fa’,
Let him follow me!
By Oppression’s woes37 and pains,
By your sons in servile chains,
We will drain our dearest veins38,
But they shall be free.
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants39 fall in every foe40,
Liberty’s in every blow,
Let us do or dee!
As a matter of fact, Scots Wha Hae is one those poems which most people have heard about and few people have read. For this reason I print it in extenso and commend it to the consideration of the critical. Is it really noble, or marvellous, or inspiring?[110] Would it pass muster41 as a new performance? Is it a whit42 the better, or sounder, or more convincing than God Save the King, which everybody cheerfully admits is not poetry? I, for one, hae me doots.
Like Artemus Ward34 and writers of “Wot-the-Orfis-Boy Finks” order, Burns owes much of his seeming inspiration and humour to an uncouth43 orthography44. Put into decent English, many of his most vaunted lays amount to nothing at all. Indeed, practically the whole of the poetry which came from his pen could be compressed into a book of fifty pages. I do not say that much of the matter one would have to include in those fifty pages is not matter of an exceptional and extraordinary quality. Mr. Henley has told us that in the vernacular46, Burns, at his best, touches the highest level; and with this pronouncement nobody who knows the difference between good writing and bad will quarrel. But I do assert that the best of Burns is not sufficient, either in quality or quantity, to justify47 the absurd fame which[111] has been bestowed48 upon him by his countrymen. James I., whom the average Scotchman barely knows by name, was, taking him all in all, quite as good a poet as Burns. So was Barbour; so was Drummond of Hawthornden; and, I had almost added, so were Stevenson and Robert Buchanan. The question naturally arises, How comes it to pass that Burns who, excepting by a fluke, was always more or less of a middling poet, has come to rank as the finest thing in letters that Scotland ever produced? The answer to that question is simple enough. In spite of The Cotter’s Saturday Night, and two or three other pieces which are the delight and mainstay of the Scotch kirk-goer, Burns was undoubtedly49 the poet of licence and alcoholism. Also he was a ploughman.
Should humble50 state our mirth provoke!
What folly51 to misca’ that,
The sapling grows a stately oak,
Wi’ spreading shade and a’ that.
For a’ that and a’ that,
His toils52 and cares and a’ that,
We’ve seen a ploughman crowned at last
The king o’ men for a’ that.
[112]
After illicit53 love and flaring54 drunkenness, nothing appeals so much to Scotch sentiment as having been born in the gutter55. In this matter of admiration56 for people who attain57 notoriety from a basis of humble origins I do not know that the Scotch stand entirely58 alone. At the present moment, much fuss is being made in the newspapers over a policeman who has seen fit to devote himself to the painting of pictures, and who has succeeded in getting one of his canvases hung at Burlington House; and if I remember rightly there used to be a postman poet of whom sundry59 highly placed critics wrote sundry kindly60 encouraging and gratuitous61 things. Also the English press is apt to tell us that the great Lord So-and-So was originally a bootblack, and that the great Mr. So-and-So went to Canada with seven shillings in his pocket. In fact, the prodigy62 who began on nothing, and ultimately became rich or famous, is a figure which British humanity dearly loves. And Burns, as we have seen, was a ploughman. What special excellence63 may lie in being a[113] ploughman nobody but a Scotchman may perceive. In England our booms on humble talent are of short duration. Clare and Ebenezer Elliott both had their little day, and ceased to be. But the Scotch ploughman persists, and the fact that he was a ploughman helps him to persist, and is a great source of pride to the Scotch. The real reason, however, why Burns became, and continues to be, a sort of patron saint to the peoples north of the Tweed is, as I have already suggested, that he was an erotic writer and a condoner64 of popular vices. Turn where you will in his precious works, you will find that drunkenness and impropriety are matters for which he has unqualified sympathy. Whiskey and women are the subjects which furnish forth65 the majority of his flights. He writes of both with a freedom which would not nowadays be tolerated, and the moral effect of what he has to say cannot be regarded as otherwise than detrimental66. I have before pointed67 out that one of Mr. Henley’s critics has asserted that the standard[114] of morality in the rural districts of Scotland is much lower to-day than it was in Burns’s time. The inference is obvious. Burns, every Scotchman tells you, and tells you truly, has played no small part in moulding the sentiments and tendencies of the Scotch people as we know them. It was he who gave them their first notion of bumptious68 independence; it was he who taught them that “a man’s a man for a’ that”—which, on the whole, is a monstrous69 fallacy; it was he who averred70 that whiskey and freedom gang together; and it was he who gave the countenance71 of song to shameful72 and squalid sexuality. In a great number of Burns’s love songs the suggestion is of the lowest. One could take a selection of these songs, print them in a little book, have them sold in the streets of London at a penny, and be prosecuted73 at Bow Street for one’s trouble. The man’s mind was not clean; he made the Muse74 an instrument for the promulgation75 of skulduddery (I will not vouch76 for the orthography, but every Scotchman knows what I[115] mean); he degraded and prostituted his intellect, and earned thereby77 the love and worship of a people who appear to have a sympathetic weakness for erotic verse if it be but Scotch.
It is hard to get the truth about Burns out of the Scotch writers; yet the more honest among them have always had a sneaking78 suspicion that he was an overrated poet. Somehow, in perusing79 their estimates, one has a feeling that Burns is not so much being expounded80 as defended. Stevenson, who tried to be just, has come nearer the mark about him than any writer of our own time; but even Stevenson lacked the courage to go the whole hog45. Of Burns, the writer, he could be brought to say nothing more trenchant81 than that he “had a tendency to borrow a hint,” and that he was “indebted in a very uncommon82 degree to Ramsay and Fergusson.” And, he adds, by way of defence, that “when we remember Burns’s obligation to his predecessors83, we must never forget his immense advances on them.” Perhaps not.
[116]
As to Burns, the man, it is safe to say that a more profligate84 person has seldom figured on the slopes of Parnassus. In love he was as carnal as he was false. He canted and prated85 and pretended, but his relations with women will not bear examination. His life as a whole would have discredited86 a dustman, much less a poet. He whined87 about his “misfortunes,” and advertised them and made much out of them; but nobody in his senses can sympathise with him. That he should be held up for a model by Scottish writers and Scottish preachers is a crying scandal. The king-o’-men cackle is the sheerest impertinence. Burns never was the king o’ men. He was never even a decent living man. He never had a rag of conduct wherewithal to cover himself. He was simply an incontinent yokel88 with a gift for metricism. That his memory should stand for so much in Scotland constitutes a very grave reflection upon the Scottish character and the Scottish point of view.
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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sonnets
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| n.十四行诗( sonnet的名词复数 ) | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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accentuated
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| v.重读( accentuate的过去式和过去分词 )；使突出；使恶化；加重音符号于 | |
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annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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crave
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| vt.渴望得到，迫切需要，恳求，请求 | |
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rave
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| vi.胡言乱语；热衷谈论；n.热情赞扬 | |
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haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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hermit
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| n.隐士，修道者；隐居 | |
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arrant
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| adj.极端的；最大的 | |
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surmises
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| v.臆测，推断( surmise的第三人称单数 )；揣测；猜想 | |
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glimmer
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| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
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18
precocious
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| adj.早熟的；较早显出的 | |
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19
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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fustian
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| n.浮夸的；厚粗棉布 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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fickle
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| adj.(爱情或友谊上)易变的，不坚定的 | |
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lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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comely
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| adj.漂亮的，合宜的 | |
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esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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28
throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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deplore
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| vt.哀叹，对...深感遗憾 | |
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30
screeching
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| v.发出尖叫声( screech的现在分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫 | |
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31
discordant
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| adj.不调和的 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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gory
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| adj.流血的；残酷的 | |
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34
ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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knave
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| n.流氓；（纸牌中的）杰克 | |
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37
woes
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| 困境( woe的名词复数 )； 悲伤； 我好苦哇； 某人就要倒霉 | |
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38
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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tyrants
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| 专制统治者( tyrant的名词复数 )； 暴君似的人； （古希腊的）僭主； 严酷的事物 | |
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foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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muster
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| v.集合，收集，鼓起，激起；n.集合，检阅，集合人员，点名册 | |
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whit
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| n.一点，丝毫 | |
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uncouth
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| adj.无教养的，粗鲁的 | |
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orthography
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| n.拼字法，拼字式 | |
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hog
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| n.猪；馋嘴贪吃的人；vt.把…占为己有，独占 | |
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46
vernacular
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| adj.地方的，用地方语写成的；n.白话；行话；本国语；动植物的俗名 | |
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47
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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52
toils
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| 网 | |
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illicit
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| adj.非法的，禁止的，不正当的 | |
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flaring
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| a.火焰摇曳的，过份艳丽的 | |
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gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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56
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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57
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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sundry
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| adj.各式各样的，种种的 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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gratuitous
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| adj.无偿的，免费的；无缘无故的，不必要的 | |
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prodigy
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| n.惊人的事物，奇迹，神童，天才，预兆 | |
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excellence
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| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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condoner
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| 容忍，宽恕，原谅 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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detrimental
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| adj.损害的，造成伤害的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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bumptious
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| adj.傲慢的 | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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averred
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| v.断言( aver的过去式和过去分词 )；证实；证明…属实；作为事实提出 | |
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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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prosecuted
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| a.被起诉的 | |
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muse
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| n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感 | |
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promulgation
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| n.颁布 | |
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vouch
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| v.担保；断定；n.被担保者 | |
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77
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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78
sneaking
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| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
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79
perusing
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| v.读（某篇文字）( peruse的现在分词 )；（尤指）细阅；审阅；匆匆读或心不在焉地浏览（某篇文字） | |
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80
expounded
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| 论述，详细讲解( expound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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81
trenchant
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| adj.尖刻的，清晰的 | |
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82
uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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83
predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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84
profligate
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| adj.行为不检的；n.放荡的人，浪子，肆意挥霍者 | |
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85
prated
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| v.（古时用语）唠叨，啰唆( prate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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86
discredited
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| 不足信的，不名誉的 | |
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87
whined
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| v.哀号( whine的过去式和过去分词 )；哀诉，诉怨 | |
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88
yokel
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| n.乡下人；农夫 | |
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