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Biography
of Robert Burns
Robert Burns
was born near Ayr, Scotland, 25th of January, 1759. He was the
son of William Burnes, or Burness, at the time of the poet's
birth a nurseryman on the banks of the Doon in Ayrshire.
His father, though always extremely poor, attempted to give
his children a fair education, and Robert, who was the eldest,
went to school for three years in a neighboring village, and
later, for shorter periods, to three other schools in the vicinity.
But it was to his father and to his own reading that he owed
the more important part of his education; and by the time that
he had reached manhood he had a good knowledge of English, a
reading knowledge of French, and a fairly wide acquaintance
with the masterpieces of English literature from the time of
Shakespeare to his own day.
In 1766
William Burness rented on borrowed money the farm of Mount Oliphant,
and in taking his share in the effort to make this undertaking
succeed, the future poet seems to have seriously overstrained
his physique. In 1771 the family move to Lochlea, and Burns
went to the neighboring town of Irvine to learn flax-dressing.
The only result of this experiment, however, was the formation
of an acquaintance with a dissipated sailor, whom he afterward
blamed as the prompter of his first licentious adventures. His
father died in 1784, and with his brother Gilbert the poet rented
the farm of Mossgiel; but this venture was as unsuccessful as
the others. He had meantime formed an irregular intimacy with
Jean Armour, for which he was censured by the Kirk-session.
As a result of his farming misfortunes, and the attempts of
his father-in-law to overthrow his irregular marriage with Jean,
he resolved to emigrate; and in order to raise money for the
passage he published (Kilmarnock, 1786) a volume of the poems
which he had been composing from time to time for some years.
This volume was unexpectedly successful, so that, instead of
sailing for the West Indies, he went up to Edinburgh, and during
that winter he was the chief literary celebrity of the season.
An enlarged edition of his poems was published there in 1787,
and the money derived from this enabled him to aid his brother
in Mossgiel, and to take and stock for himself the farm of Ellisland
in Dumfriesshire. His fame as poet had reconciled the Armours
to the connection, and having now regularly married Jean, he
brought her to Ellisland, and once more tried farming for three
years. Continued ill-success, however, led him, in 1791, to
abandon Ellisland, and he moved to Dumfries, where he had obtained
a position in the Excise. But he was now thoroughly discouraged;
his work was mere drudgery; his tendency to take his relaxation
in debauchery increased the weakness of a constitution early
undermined; and he died at Dumfries in his thirty-eighth year.
It is not
necessary here to attempt to disentangle or explain away the
numerous amours in which he was engaged through the greater
part of his life. It is evident that Burns was a man of extremely
passionate nature and fond of conviviality; and the misfortunes
of his lot combined with his natural tendencies to drive him
to frequent excesses of self-indulgence. He was often remorseful,
and he strove painfully, if intermittently, after better things.
The poetry
of Robert Burns falls into two main groups: English and Scottish.
His English poems are, for the most part, inferior specimens
of conventional eighteenth century verse. But in Scottish poetry
he achieved triumphs of a quite extraordinary kind. Since the
time of the Reformation and the union of the crowns of England
and Scotland, the Scots dialect had largely fallen into disuse
as a medium for dignified writing. Shortly before Burns' time,
however, Allan Ramsay and Robert
Fergusson had
been the leading figures in a revival of the vernacular, and
Robert Burns received from them a national tradition which he
succeeded in carrying to its highest pitch, becoming thereby,
to an almost unique degree, the poet of his people.
He first
showed complete mastery of verse in the field of satire. In
The Twa Herds, Holy Willie's Prayer, Address to the Unco Guid,
The Holy Fair, and others, he manifested sympathy with the protest
of the so-called New Light party, which had sprung up in opposition
to the extreme Calvinism and intolerance of the dominant Auld
Lichts. The fact that Burns had personally suffered from the
discipline of the Kirk probably added fire to his attacks, but
the satires show more than personal animus. The force of the
invective, the keenness of the wit, and the fervor of the imagination
which they displayed, rendered them an important force in the
theological liberation of Scotland.
The Kilmarnock
volume contained, besides satire, a number of poems like The
Twa Dogs and The Cotter's Saturday Night, which are vividly
descriptive of the Scots peasant life with which he was most
familiar; and a group like Puir Mailie and To a Mouse, which,
in the tenderness of their treatment of animals, revealed one
of the most attractive sides of Burns' personality. Many of
his poems were never printed during his lifetime, the most remarkable
of these being The Jolly Beggars, a piece in which, by the intensity
of his imaginative sympathy and the brilliance of his technique,
he renders a picture of the lowest dregs of society in such
a way as to raise it into the realm of great poetry.
But
the real national importance of Robert Burns is due chiefly
to his songs. The Puritan austerity of the centuries following
the Reformation had discouraged secular music, like other forms
of art, in Scotland; and as a result Scottish song had become
hopelessly degraded in point both of decency and literary quality.
From youth Burns had been interested in collecting the fragments
he had heard sung or found printed, and he came to regard the
rescuing of this almost lost national inheritance in the light
of a vocation. About his song-making, two points are especially
noteworthy: first, that the greater number of his lyrics sprang
from actual emotional experiences; second, that almost all were
composed to old melodies. While in Edinburgh he undertook to
supply material for Johnson's Musical Museum, and as few of
the traditional songs could appear in a respectable collection,
Burns found it necessary to make them over. Sometimes he kept
a stanza or two; sometimes only a line or chorus; sometimes
merely the name of the air; the rest was his own. His method,
as he has told us himself, was to become familiar with the traditional
melody, to catch a suggestion from some fragment of the old
song, to fix upon an idea or situation for the new poem; then,
humming or whistling the tune as he went about his work, he
wrought out the new verses, going into the house to write them
down when the inspiration began to flag. In this process is
to be found the explanation of much of the peculiar quality
of the songs of Burns. Scarcely any known author has succeeded
so brilliantly in combining his work with folk material, or
in carrying on with such continuity of spirit the tradition
of popular song. For George Thomson's collection of Scottish
airs he performed a function similar to that which he had had
in the Museum; and his poetical activity during the last eight
or nine years of his life was chiefly devoted to these two publications.
In spite of the fact that he was constantly in severe financial
straits, he refused to accept any recompense for this work,
preferring to regard it as a patriotic service. And it was,
indeed, a patriotic service of no small magnitude. By birth
and temperament he was singularly fitted for the task, and this
fitness is proved by the unique extent to which his productions
were accepted by his countrymen, and have passed into the life
and feeling of his race.
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