The Influence of Robert Burns on American Literature

BY

WALLACE BRUCE, United States Consul, Edinburgh.

HERE are many sides to the subject which has been suggested as an acceptable topic for consideration in the first number of THE BURNS CHRONICLE. Only a few phases can be glanced at in the limits assigned. The influence of any great writer may be seen: first, in the form of literary expression, or what is generally known as style. Second, in the more vital and permanent power of the truth presented. The influence of the first is generally more immediate ; and, like fashionplates, more readily observed. The style of Johnson and Pope, of Carlyle and Macaulay, can be easily traced among their respective followers, admirers and disciples, on both sides of the Atlantic. The outward form of each writer lives its little day to give way in its turn to newer forms of expression. It becomes difficult therefore to estimate by deduction the exact power of force of any writer in imposing his own distinctive style on a living and ever-developing literature.

It is also difficult to deal scientifically and philosophically by the adoption of the inductive method, for the field is too wide to gather up facts, which are not subject to contradiction or criticism, and it is manifestly impossible to put one's finger upon any form of literature and say that its manifold threads are from any one loom.

Laying aside the didactic pentameter which has had its day, it might however be premised that since the days of Chaucer and Spencer, two schools of poetry have been struggling for mastery. On the one hand we have the honest Ballad and Lyric, direct and incisive; on the other the euphuistic and mystical, word-woven and complicated; the first more especially Saxon, Gaelic and Scandinavian in origin, dealing with things; the second deriving its power largely from French, German and

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Italian sources. Perhaps in the direct line of succession from Spencer, Keats might be taken as the best expression of the latter school; Burns, drawing his inspiration from the old fashioned Ballad and Lyric, might be regarded as the best embodiment of the natural school.

It is right here where the power of Burns is especially manifest in the development of American literature. The artistic element of Keats appealing forcibly to the sense, and the graceful lines of his disciples, especially acceptable to some of our best artistic magazines, and perfect to the canon of art, swoon and die in languid delight; while Burns and what we might call the school of every-day poets, looking less to the form than the matter, find higher satisfaction for themselves and the general public in natural and song-like rythm, equally adapted for narration or the deepest passion. It abides in our memory by its consonance and melody, becomes a part of our being, while the artificial and the borrowed pass away to be forgotten. We recall with delight the early ballads of Browning. They have the true ring and are as honest as John Gilpin; but the best lovers of the later Browning are compelled to sit with book in hand and scan with care when they are lost in the sublime aesthetics of his mysticism and introversions. Coleridge, Tennyson and Wordsworth, the greatest of later English poets never forget, even in their highest philosophy, the refrain and melodious recurrence of natural song. At least where this element is retained they speak with power, where it is omitted, they unite with abated vigour.

Take a simple test: Read to any child of ten or twelve years, or any class of scholars from ten to twenty years of age, or to grown up people, a poem from Percy's Reliques every day for a week and for the same space an equal number of lines from the school of Keats and Browning, and it will be found that the old-fashioned lines of "Chevy Chase" and "Robin Hood" and the "Nut-Browne Mayd" will be retained in memory, while the other has passed away with the reading. Burns, Coleridge, Tennyson and Wordsworth, become therefore the leaders of natural verse which abides readily in the memory, and their influence is distinctly traceable in the growth of American literature. In the directness and sweetness of Longfellow, of Whittier, of Holmes, of Bryant, and Lowell, the five poets, par

excellence, of America we note that the natural school of verse has triumphed over the mystic, the foreign and the supra-artistic.

This being so, it is a notable fact that Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell and Holmes, have all testified to their admiration and affection for the Scottish Poet. Each acknowledges for himself the mastership of Burns. His influence is traceable in their lines. Through their souls streams the bright flame of his wide charity and brotherhood. The form of the Ballad and Lyric are secure and the more secure for his leadership as against the school of mysticism and inversion.

Burns has been listened to eagerly in America because, perhaps, more than any other British writer he seemed to understand the spirit of her institutions. He seemed to know intuitively that American liberty was born and reared at christian firesides. Early New England had much in common with the Scotch mode of thinking and aspiration. The Cotter's Saturday Night and Whittier's Snow Bound, show close relation in thought and feeling.

Burns saw that the American Republic in its noblest conception was the highest expression of the great truths of Christ's Gospel. Not a Utopia, not unrestrained license, but a realization of the lofty utterance that "he is a freeman whom the truth makes free." As a Scotch peasant Burns saw this. His clay built shieling, and the studious household which it sheltered, would not have been lonesome among the hills of New England. His sympathy was with freedom everywhere. "God bless the cause of liberty everywhere as he did that day" was the noble sentence affixed to his immotral song of Bannockburn. There was nothing insular in his devotion. His Lines to Washington and "A man's a man for a' that" were caught up by a nation of toilers, subduing with sturdy arms and stout hearts the great forests and virgin soil of productive valleys. He helped the land to appreciate its own manhood. He proclaimed as it had never been proclaimed before, the earl hemp of personal independence, and taught us that the hodden-grey element of Scottish and Saxon literature was worth more than the euphuisms and Lillyisms of sickly refinement.

His songs moreover, of love and hope, filled a great want in our literary life. Simplicity, and sincerity went hand in hand.

through all his utterances, with a just, and true reverance. His influence went also deeper than mere literary or social questions. He moulded the religious thought of the people. As in Scotland, so in America, this was the great mission of Burns, which can only be briefly referred to in the compass of this article. When Henry Ward Beecher gave his powerful address in New York, at the Centenary of Burns, the Christian world was ready for the sentiment, that the great orator so eloquently espoused. There are people here and there, who cannot separate the life of a man from his teaching, who forget that only one, throughout the world's history, came free from human infirmities. Such critics do not willingly see the great work of Burns, in laying bare, cant and hypocrisy, in disposing of pagan ideas, which are of no credit to a christian civilzation; in showing that there is an eternal good, and an eternal evil; that goodness is altogether lovely, and vice and wickedness altogether hideous. Here is the great power of Burns in America, and, after Mr. Beecher finished his address, the critic looked dejected and has not dared to show "his phiz mong better folks." He was relegated to his proper sphere, "close under hatches." The world then saw in its fulness that Burns was a living preacher to the best teachers of living thought.

As the great and good poet Whittier once wrote to me: “I have never heard him estimated too highly as a poet, and I do not see how he can be." I once heard Dr. M'Cosh tell a knot of preachers, that, as a teacher of christian truth, Burns was greater than either Milton or Wordsworth; more than that said the learned Doctor, the man who wrote "A man's a Man for a' that" within six months of his death, and kept the excise. books of his district without blot, or mistake, was not very far gone as a man either. In honesty, simplicity and vigour, Burns. has exerted great influence on American thought and literary expression. Its best acknowledgement will be the awakening. of thought and criticism in this direction.

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"BONNIE JEAN,"

A MEMOIR.

By RO. BURNS-BEGG.

REAT MEN taken up in any way," says Carlyle, in his "Hero Worship," are profitable company-We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man without gaining something by him," and probably this truism is never better exemplified than when we contemplate a man of genius, not in the glare of the foot-lights, but in the more varying and penetrating side-lights emanating from his own domestic hearth. It is not therefore to be altogether regretted that we do not content ourselves with merely drinking in the stately rounded period or the finely flowing melodious utterance, but desire and desire too in a spirit that will not be gainsaid, a more realistic revelation of the fellow mortal who has diffused so much witchery around us.

In no instance has this desire become so general and insatiable as in relation to our National Poet, Robert Burns. The thoughts and sentiments he breathed, alike in his prose and in his poetry, are so vigorous, and heart stirring, that the reader, in his admiration of the Poet feels an irresistible longing to know all that can possibly be known of the Man; and this longing nothing will satisfy but actual contact with the details of his every day life and the most penetrating scrutiny into the inmost recesses of his nature and character. Such a scrutiny must be a trying ordeal in any case, and when applied to a nature, so very exceptional as Burns', it must necessarily reveal much that his worshippers would fain consign to oblivion. And yet, the test only brings out in clearer and sharper lines, the finest features of his character-his unvarying consistency, his thorough integrity of heart, and his fearless honesty of purpose.

In the midst of the wide spread and ever increasing interest in every thing relating to Burns, it is marvellous that so little