Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-01-25 00:00:00

ROBERT BURNS.

In Edinburgh, in London, in Liverpool, in Glasgow, in
Manchester, in Bristol, and many other great cities and
tom ; in little hamlets ; among Highland glens, and
Lancashire moors, and Irish mountain villages, the
Memory of Robert Burns will be pledged this night.
Probably in every country of the civilised or half-civilised
World, some voice will sing or murmur some lines of Burns
V3.llight• Wherever, throughout the earth, there are
tongue,
or three gathered together who speak the English
ngue, the name of Burns will be uttered. At the
P:
:ibiinettelirgi: banquet it will be proposed to a company of
authors, and men of eminence and genius ; and
in poor public-houses, scattered through cities and over
eoun roads, hands will stretch out to clasp other hands
When the refrain of " Auld lang syne" is sung. No undue
honours are thus paid. The memory celebrated to-night
Is that of the greatest poet of the people ever born into
the world. No man, probably, save only our own
Shaksp
a ere, ever equalled Burns in the breadth
his Popularity, among the rich and the
Poor, the scholars and the know-nothings, Let
any One who doubts it run over in his mind
the names of the greatest poets out of the four literatures
of_ modern Europe, and ask himself which of them ever
found such an equality of honour among the great and
the small of the 'world. The most accomplished scholars
and the most appreciative minds of our days, have never
round better 'expression than when they illustrated the
genius of Robert Burns ; and the poor peasant has never
sung with more heart and energy than when he roared
in the chorus of one of Burns' ballads. The popularity
of an era would, indeed, be a poor test of genius ; and so,
too) would be, in many instances, the appreciation of
mere scholars and men of laboured refinement. But the
singer who can secure the hearts and intellects of all
allke,,and whose fame is only spreading abroad, rising
and•deepening, half a century after he has been laid in
earth, may bid defiance to time and rain-storm, and be
reckoned among the immortals of the world.
If Robert Burns looked great among those of his own
century, it must be remembered that it was not as
Gulliver seemed a giant among the Lilliputians. Were
theliterature of the world, like the globe itself, divided
into five great sections, the century in which Burns
lived might fairly claim to be classed as one great division.
During that century lived some of the greatest world-
poets of history. What a noble list of names will rise to
the lips of every one who thinks for five minutes over

that period Scott and Byron, Wordsworth and Cole-
ridge, Shelley and Keats, Goethe and Schiller,
Alfixri, and many others, which will occur to every one,
down to Beranger, the latest called away, and Uhland
the:last yet living. No man among them all had the
special inspiration of genius more unmistakeably breathed
into him than Burns. His songs were slight and light
indeed, but they were slight and light as was the arrow
of Prince Ahmed in the fairy tale, which shot so far
beyond all the others, that its true range was not dis-
covered until many of its predecessors had rusted in
earth ; and when found, it led those who sought it on to a
palace of inexhaustible riches and wonders. These little
songs float along in the middle air, and are
borne within human sight for ever, while
pon-
derous, laboured productions have found the ground
by their own dead weight, and having been gazed at for
awhile there at last sank into it and rotted, and were
forgotten. Many poets excelled him in many things,
bmuatrs7,as the greatest popular singer in the world, no
must attempt a contest with him.
People
are fond of comparing Burns with some other
poets Of a kindred class. He has been frequently likened
11411°111u Moore, to Dibdin, to Beranger. He was not
t any of these_certainly not like either of the first
ao—in more than merely accidental characteristics of
it..--,genitis. lie sang of love and of his native country,
~.'(10 in this regard, but scarcely in any other, was like
mas Moore. No poet ever was more true to simpli-
tcoiftoyk and to nature than Burns ; and scarcely any ever
greater liberties with both than Moore. So much
Moore's poetry is made up of rich mosaic orna-
luentation, periphrasis, and conceit, that a translation
of some passages into plain language—such as Jean
Paul Richter was once urged to produce of his works—
would, discover many an exquisite poetic grace
which now lies hidden and •erushed under its weight
of adornments. With many reasons to incline us to a
partiality for Thomas Moore, we cannot put him side by
side with Burns.

Some qualities of Burns' genius resemble, in simple
strengthbadail_m ballad-muse
homely manly pathos, the staunch English
of Dibdin ; but the scope of Dibdin was so
immeasurably narrower, that, on a general and whole
comparison of the two, the points of similarity are lost.
All the qualities of universality and of infinitude are
Wanting to our sea-singer.
Beranger is in many of his natural gifts a fitting rival
of Burns. As a popular singer he comes nearer to Burns
than any other modern. Both poets had tender glimpses
of exquisite pathos ; manly feeling ; savage, painful force
of satire. "Holy Willie's Prayer" is just such a piece
ferocious sardonic humour as " Le Bon Dieu;" and
"A Man's a Man for a' That" scarcely surpasses in
brave inspiriting independence the stout self-
reliance, the honest scorn for ennobled mean-
ness which rings in "Je suis vilain et tres-
yilain.:" Many other points of resemblance might
be suggested ; one indeed will occur to most readers
which it is not pleasant to allude to. Burns did not
always write of women as he wrote of " Highland
Mary," and we all too well know what kind of piping
`Faun his fellow poet often beeame. In Burns, on the
whole, we find truer simplicity, passionate depths far
deeper ; a more heartfelt sympathy with nature ; glimpses
of a higher aspiration, and a more spiritual purity and
almost sanctity of pathos, than in even the most exquisite
specimens of Beranger's exquisite minstrelsy. The
early companionship of the hills and the fields and
.the
daisies brought out deeper and truer feeling than that of
the light-hearted male and female groups who laughed
and sang in the famous " garret."

There is another and a greater poet than Beranger,

enius seems to us to have in its wonderful variety
of phases some which are closely affined to many of the
greatest attributes of Burns. Can we anywhere find
ballads like some of the Scottish poet's—as short, as

simple, as rich in varied feeling, as graceful and as
tender, yet as clear and strong ? .It seems to us that in
many of the ballads and lyrics of Goethe will be found
such affinities to the genius of Burns. The few lines
we can now write allow of no critical comparison, even if
such a thing were 'at all in place at the present moment
And in these columns. But any one who likes can follow
sut the parallel for himself, and will perhaps be surprised
to find how much more of justice there is in it than he at
first imagined. 'The force of genius and of nature makes
two men, so widely differing, for a moment kin. They
touch at one point, like two circles, and meet no more.

Quite enough, indeed far too much talk has been
made about the moral character of Burns as a man. We
may dispense with any severe lessons to be drawn from
Such a source upon an occasion like the present, and it is
quite certain that public virtue will not suffer from any
leniency of the kind, seeing that there will always be
moralists enough to keep people's minds alive to the errors
of everygreat man who is dead. It is consoling to think that
Burns' failings have been in general extravagantly over-
rated ; and it is, indeed, obvious that if he had been the
drunken idler some good people like to represent him,
he never could have produced a series of poems not more
remarkable for the spontaneity of genius than for careful
and elaborate culture and finish. We celebrate to-night
°!klY the poet, not the ploughman or the exciseman.
And even if we must be morally critical, we should
remember that there are other sins besides love of
dunk—that
there is other foul speaking besides that
Which waywardness and )seated blood.produce. We are

not excusing the errors of Burtis. Indeed, even if we
were, it is tolerably certain that very little harm ever was
done in this world from too much excusing of the errors
of the dead. But it is quite well to remind readers of the
fact, that all modern morality seems to mean merely the
avoidance of two vices drinking and dissipation ;
just as all modern wisdom seems to point to mere
personal prudence and household economy alone. Let
us remember that a man may dislike ardent spirits, and
never dream of dissipation, and yet be worthless, dis-
honest, utterly mean and deserving of hate. Let us
recollect that a man may take good care of his money,
lay by in the Savings' Bank, consider the ways of the
ant, make full provision for all rainy days, and yet be a
lavish fool and very prodigal of that which cannot be
gathered together in hoards and secured in bank-books.
Remembering these things, we may be a little lenient to
• the other forms of vice and folly into which the rare
temptations and the rarer gifts of Robert Burns
sometimes betrayed him. Most truthfully does Thomas
Carlyle say, when pleading for Mirabeau, " Hate him
not—nay, you cannot hate him, for the light of genius
was in him, which never yet was wholly base or hateful."
Indeed, the noble quality of poetic genius is, that its
influence for evil, even when it is thus distorted, is but
slight, while its power for good is exhaustless. Leaving
the merely artistic question out of sight, let us ask
which are the influential songs of Burns ? Are they
those which speak lightly of women and affectionately of
drink—or are they those which stir up manly feeling,
which warm anew extinguishing friendships, arouse
compassion for feeble and helpless objects, awaken sym-
pathy for all the creations of surrounding nature, set the
patriotic emotions of the heart all glowing—" strike with
their wand in dry and dusty places, and bid the living
fountains gush and sparkle ?" • Let us be content with
thinking that all we have now to, concern ourselves
with, all we are called upon to-night to honour, are just
those qualities of the being called Robert Burns which
he had not in common with other men, and which alone
leave deep and lasting power—power neither belonging
to nor ending with his personal identity uvon earth.
There is no smell of the public-house lamp about the
" Cottar's Saturday Night ;" no smack of the whiskey
noggin in the lines to " Mary in Heaven."
We are glad to find that very few indeed of the
festivals of to-night are arranged upon so narrow a
basis as to be confined to " Scotchmen and the sons of
Scotchmon." Appreciation of Robert Burns does not
come by nature or hereditary descent to Scotchmen ;
and Scotchmen must indeed form a very poor estimate
of the position their national poet holds in literature who
would cabin him up to Scotland and themselves alone.
This is infinitely more nonsensical than the " Ireland for
the Irish" cry, which has happily cried itself to sleep
long ago. Robert Burns belongs to us all—his fame
indeed folds in the orb of the earth•. What Englishman
would ever think of a Shaksperian celebration limited to
Englishmen ? We might as well expect the Greeks to
accuse Mr. Gladstone of an outrage upon their national
property, because he published a book about Homer.
But, however these things be, it is gratifying to
find that material, money-making Liverpool can leave
commerce aside for one night, and bear a part in the
national honours paid to the memory of a mere poet.
This year seems peculiar in similar events. A few days
since a public celebration took pl ace in Germany, to
welcome the ninetieth birthday of a still living popular
poet, the venerable and eminent Arndt ; and later in the
year all the German's fatherland will pay fitting honours
to the memory and the centenary of its illustrious Schiller.
Liverpool, which is so ready to welcome living celebrities,
no matter what odour their fame exhales ; which hangs
out its triumphal arches to honour titled warriors, where
even enemies cannot accuse it of hero-worship ; and which is
so often somewhat injudiciously hasty in conferring its
rewards upon supposed commercial success Liverpool
will do something towards its own purer reputation by
adding a spray to the wreath which the nation lays
upon a great poet's grave.