A CRITIQUE ON THE POEMS OF BURNS. AMONG modern poets, it would be difficult to mention one who has displayed greater originality of genius than BURNS, the Ayrshire Ploughman. The range of his thoughts was not indeed very extensive, nor were the subjects on which he wrote greatly varied; for as the most powerful genius cannot create one simple idea, but must content itself with making different combinations of those which are treasured up in the memory, an illiterate bard, who has not stored his mind by travel and attentive observation, has comparatively but a small number of materials on which to work. Such a bard, however, may possess, in the highest degree, the talents essential to his art. A The province of poetry is to describe, in vivid colours, nature and passion; and the most illiterate man, of a vigorous mind, may describe with accuracy such scenes of nature as he has seen, and such passions as he has experienced either in himself or in others; but he must do more than this to be entitled to the honour of a poet. In genuine poetry, there is something analogous to creation, or at least to the reduction of chaos into form. To describe only individual scenes, is to write natural history rather than poetry. The poet must be able to analyse the ideas of individual scenes into their constituent parts; to combine these parts into new formspossible, however, in themselves, and analogous to what he has actually witnessed; and to exhibit, in a striking point of view, the effects of the various passions-not only such effects as he has known to flow from them, but all such effects as they are naturally capable of producing. All this may be done by an illiterate poet who has never travelled, as well as by him who has had the benefit of a liberal education, and made the tour of Europe: but it is obvious that the range of the former must be much more limited than the range of the latter. His descriptions, however, if not so varied, may be more vivid; for the learned poet is too apt to intermix what he has read or heard with what he has seen; and: the copy of a copy can never produce the same powerful effect with a faithful painting from nature. Had BURNS attempted to paint the face of a country quite different from any that he had ever seen, or to describe the manners of courtiers, he would certainly have failed; or had he possessed, on the other hand, the advantages of a liberal education, it may be doubted whether his language would have been so perfectly adapted to the. description of those scenes, with which alone he was thoroughly acquainted. But, by selecting all his subjects from low life as it actually presented itself to his own eyes, and writing in the very language which is spoken by the heroes and heroines of his poems, his powerful imagination has produced an effect, on the mind of every man of taste to whom his language is intelligible, similar to that which his latest biographer, and one of the most judicious of his critics*, has declared that the first perusal of his poems produced on him. "Before finishing a page," says this modest though able writer, "I experienced emotions of * See Burns's Poems, published (1811) by the trustees of the late James Morison, and sold by Bell and Bradfute, Edinburgh, and Anderson, Stirling. |