WAS BURNS MELANCHOLY? IT I. may be doubted if any man understands the real Burns who does not discover that melancholy— or at least pensiveness, to use a lighter term-is not the basal mood of his mind. It is venturesome to assert this of one whose wit was the flick of a perfect diamond, and who wrote "The Jolly Beggars" and "Holy Willie and "Tam o' Shanter," but the affirmation carries no inconsistency. Mark Twain said that gravity is the soil of humour, and declared that he was a grave man himself at the core-a fact vouched for by those who knew him best. In one of his letters, Burns makes a similar confession. "My constitution and frame," he writes, "were ab origine blasted with a deep and incurable taint of hypochondria which poisons my existence." Allowing for a dash of generous extravagance in this revelation, its main truth is capable of some significant justification. To Mr Robert Muir he writes: "You and I have often agreed that life is no great blessing on the whole." Even to his captivating Clarinda he vents a similar opinion. "How happy I have been!" he cries; then adds-" How little of that scantling portion of time, called the life of man, is sacred to happiness! much less to transport! I could moralise to-night like a death's-head. 6 Oh, what is Life, that thoughtless wish of all? A drop of honey in a draught of gall! Such sentiments from the pen of Burns may seem strange; but that it expressed a general mood of his is clear enough His ode on "Despondency" drips with melancholy of a personal quality. The opening verse is drumlie enough for a sadder spirit than Burns's : "Life is a Take another quotation from his letters :fairy scene; almost all that deserves the name of enjoyment or happiness is only a charming delusion; and in comes repining age, in all the gravity of hoary wisdom, and wretchedly chases away the bewitching phantom." This is from Burns in his top-day; it was written to Richard Brown, Greenock, from Mossgiel, in 1788-eight years before his death. Yes, and even in the opening of his career, he sends such lines as these to his father: "I am quite transported at the thought that ere long, perhaps very soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all the pains and uneasiness and disquietudes of this weary life, for I assure you I am heartily tired of it; and, if I do not very much deceive myself, could contentedly and gladly resign it 'The soul, uneasy and confined at home, In what was probably one of the last letters he wrote, he says to his cousin: "You know, and my physician assures me, that melancholy and low spirits are half my disease." Those who saw Burns in the flesh agree that although he brightened up in congenial company, the habitual expression of his face was one of "gloomy attentiveness,” and "moody thoughtfulness; " and Allan Cunningham affirms rather severely, perhaps--that it was "intensely melancholy." Goudie Miller, of Alloway, in retailing his recollections of the Poet, informed enquirers that Burns often sat for hours with his head in his hand, even among his cronies, without speaking to them. Further evidence is plentiful, but need not be quoted. What has rather to be noted is that this dye of melancholy, far from being in any way derogatory to Burns, is a necessary complement of his genius. It is the incubator of poetry. What says Shelley?— "We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught. The sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought." It is in the marshy, muddy side-wash of life's stream that the celestial bird of poetry builds her downy cradle and flutes her notes of inspiration; the diver must search the bottom for his pearls; and cunning Nature's crucible for her diamonds is the black earth. Burns was a windmill to every human mood, and chiefly to that of despondency; and, just because of this, he flung his magical hand over the full gamut of mortal experience, and awakened chords more deep, more passionate, more pathetic, than any other minstrel. Out of the depths he cried to the world, and the world listened. This, too, has to be chronicled-trat the Poet's keen sense of life's despair heightens his credit in struggling, struggling with bleeding heart and feet, towards his ideal. That he failed to attain the calm heights is scarcely a marvel (what saint was ever as holy as he wished to be ?), for the very temperament which fostered the Poet was something of a handicap to the man of affairs. Great men may be classified, roughly, into those whose judgment submerges their imagination and those those whose fancy endangers their resolution. Bacon was a type of the first -clear, bloodless, calculating; Burns was a type of the second-vivid, fervent, wayward. But Burns-like the Psalmist sang out of his sins and griefs and failures; and therefore he is on the same plane of influence: he has cleansed the passions of men everywhere, and showed them the tracks to the shining hills of life, at the foot of which he himself wept in grief and atoning penitence. II. A few further references suggest themselves by way of showing how this temperamental melancholy received deepening shades from the Poet's physical make-up, and also from the harassment of his untoward circumstances. It seems evident that he suffered from heart trouble. His frequent references to palpitation and heart nervousness can bear no other satisfactory construction. As early as the Mount Oliphant period-when he was only fifteen years of age-his brother Gilbert says: "At this time, he was almost constantly afflicted in the evenings with a dull headache, which at a future period of his life was exchanged for a palpitation of the heart, and a threatening of fainting and suffocation in his bed in the night-time. The symptom thus early revealed continued intermittently but increasing in its effects throughout his life. He was accustomed to have a tub of cold water by his bedside, "into which," writes Lockhart, "he usually plunged more than once in the course of the night, thereby procuring instant though but short-lived relief." He does not indulge in any exaggerated declarations of his troubles-with all his revealing frankness, he keeps his heroic side to the front-but frequently it demands some expression in his confidential correspondence. As a sample, read this very moderate confession to Mrs Dunlop : "Though at present I am below the veriest prose, yet everything from you pleases. I am groaning under the miseries of a diseased nervous system ; a system the state of which is most conducive to our happiness, or the most productive of our misery. For now near three weeks I have been so ill with a nervous headache that 66 I have been obliged for a time to give up my Excise books, being scarce able to lift my head, much less to ride once a week over ten muir parishes." Towards the end of his letter he refers to himself as a man who is weary of one world and anxious about another," and he winds up thus: "If you have a minute's leisure, take up your pen in pity to le paurre miserable." In his Common-place Book there are frequent references to "fainting fits, and other alarming symptoms of a pleurisy or some other dangerous disorder," &c. (1784)-manifestly pointing to irregularity of the heart; and there is clear evidence that this affection of the heart was more than troublesome long before his thoughtless follies were even dreamt of, much less indulged in. Moreover, his nervous condition rendered him an easy prey to the effects of ardent spirits. An occasional burst was enough to punish him for a considerable spell afterwards; and it may be affirmed with certainty that but for this congenital weakness his occasional bouts would not have had any serious results. Thousands of men have drunk alarmingly more than Burns, and the fact has escaped publicity. Scott drank a bottle of wine every day, and could accommodate three of them on an occasion, yet no one ever thinks of speaking of him in the same terms as of Burns. The truth is, that the public opinion in these two cases ought to be reversed. Burns suffered intensely from his drinking, and hence the fact of his indulgence. I could not be hidden. III. No study of the melancholy of Burns would be sufficient that did not desiderate the effects of his early experiences. Granted the temperamental quality, there were many aggravating circumstances, especially in the impressive period of his boyhood, which fed the gloom with added sadness. There can be no more poignant evidence on this chapter of his career than the testimony of his brother Gilbert. It is very direct and unaffected. Referring to the tragic family excitements at Mount |