The Sun.
London, England, 1832-01-26 00:00:00

SCOTCH LITERARY FESTIVAL.

Yesterday, at Freemasons' Hall, there was a pub-
lic dine r "to celebrate the birth-day of Robert
Burns." The circumstance of the Ettrick Shepherds
whose birth-day falls also on the 25th of January, being
now for the first time in town, suggested the propriety of
holding this festival upon a larger scale than usual—Liest.-
General Sir John Malcolm, G.C.B. in the chair."
The gallery was filled with ladies.
The dinner commenced badly enough. Provender had
been ordered for 200 persons only, while there were nearer
500 present. The euests at the middle table were for a
tim.. left wholly without dinner; and when, by dint of
loLd and long complainings (which it was vainly attempted
to drown by the not much more harmonious sound of the
bag-pipes), their empty plates were at length filled, still it
was not in a manner which men who knew the value of
255. (and who know that better than our excellent fellow-
countrymen from the North ?) could be expected to say
was satisfactory. We need hardly observe that this was
the fault of the stewards, and nat of " mine host," who,
if he have no other sins to answer for but that of giving
short commons, or bad commons, deserves to be canonized
at least.

The vocalists were—Messrs. G. Stansbury, Jolly,
Hobbs, Wilson, Templeton, Cellyer, Chapman, Broad-
hurst, and Master Lewis.
On the right of the Chairman were Mr. Hogg, on the
left Mr. Burns, the eldest son' of the poet ; and neat to
him Captain Burns, the second son. Amongst those at
the upper table were—Lord Porchester, Lord Mahon,
Sir George Murray, Sir Peter Laurie, Sir Pulteney Mal-
colm, Messrs. Galt, Sotheby, Wrangham, &c. &c., and
its other parts of the room were Mr. Lockhart, Mr. 0.
Cave, Capt. Basil Hall, Mr. A. Cunningham, Ice.
The situation allotted for the reporters was not much
more remote than is customary at public dinners, yet,
owing to the crowd and the tone of voice in which most
of the speakers addressed the company, it became fre-
quently difficult to catch the purport of what was said.
The first toast was, of course, " The King ;" but it
was not received by the Chairman's coterie with that ap-
plause with which 99 out of every 100 of his Majesty's
subjects are accustomed to hail the mention of their So-
vereign's name. The health of the Queen, which fol-
lowed, was drank with decorous, but not with very marked
applau.e, by the company generally. The Chairman aid
his friends, however, now found their tongues, and
shouted with vociferous enthusiasm to this toast.
After " The Royal Family," " The Army," and " The
Navy,"
The CHAIRMAN gave, " The hero of hie country—the
Duke of Wellington."
Here again it was observable that there was a portion
of the company whose political opinions were strongly at
variance with those of the majority present. These gentle-
men shouted unmercifully to the toast, while from the rest
of the room their applause, or the feast itself, or both,
elicited the most marked expressions of disapprobation ;
and several gentlemen who now appeared to bave pene-
trated a design which, from the very outset, had been
palpable enough, exclaimed, " Sink politics ; we are not
met here as politicians." These symptoms were rather
too decisive to be misunderstood or disregarded ; and no
further attempt teas made to disturb the conviviality of
the evening by ebullitions of political feeling. The trick
was a very cluiney one, and it was attended, like most of
the other Anti-Reform devices, with signal failure.
The CHAIRMAN then displayed to the company the
swell-known bowl of Robert Burns, formed of Inverary
marble, and set in silver, out of which he should shortly
have to propose to them to toast the memory of the im-
mortal Bard.
The usual loyal and patriotic toasts having been gone
through, and " Rule Britannia" and " God save the King"
having been sung,
The CHAIRMAN got up to begin the business of the
evening. When he was invited to take the Chair on the
present interesting occasion, he felt as deeply as it was
possible for any man to feel, that nothing short of eloquence
of the highest order could do justice to those theme' on
which he should that night be called on to descant; but
at least he was not wanting in one of the first qualifica-
tions required in one who took a prominent part in the
commemoration of such an event as the anniversary of the
birth of a man like Robin Burns—yes, he was not want-
ing in that enthusiasm which constituted one of the first
qualifications in men assembled for such a purpose as on
that day brought them together. The company whom
he had the honour to address were, no doubt, chiefly
Scottish, but the English and the Irish who had that day
joined them, would, he did not question, unite as cordially
e
motaa,.,
ihnis,,vie,d,rnrrmui
the,
dan,uovntnpi
icto,
luinhu,
riatagl
tiddieitteiorei
tbnultehteheoedi ii,o,,lngry :aofegeytrtfenajnoioulcuffstissestanirsicooadueft,oc;hfttntreh,
nature,
theer:am lnv
di
mind
anosdrHytd
he osa
disclose
oot
:he eR wouldidead,
bnheorihis
Burns. He would rather desire that the immortal man
n
e
s
n
tsßheoobpveunr
purpose
p genius.
Bosue r
on f If
was eteat
magnify-
ing his distinguished powers, that he was a man without
education—it might be that he was a man without edu-
cation in the ordinary sense of the word, but so far from
being without education in the true sense of the term, he
was a man who bad received the best possible education
—he was a man v. Ito not only educated himself, but de-
rived that education from the purest sources.• The genius
of his country found him, as the prophetic bard found
Elislia—at the plough, and if ever a human being received
a Divine inspiration, that man was Robin Burns. No
man who looked at the difficulties with which he had
to contend, and with which lie had successfully contended,
would doubt, that If inspiration were denied him, it could
not be conceded to any other mortal. Let us look to the
account be gives of himself:—
" There, lanely, by the ingle-cheek,
I sat and ey'd the spewing reek,
That fili'd hoast-provoking smock
The auld clay biggin ;
An' heard the restless rattons squeak
About the riggin.
All in this mottie, misty clime.
I backward mus'd on wasted time
How I had spent my youthfu' prime,
An' done naething,
But stringin blethers up in rhyme,
For fools to sing.
Had Ito guid advice but harkit,
I might, by this, hae led a market,
Or strutted in a:bank and clarkit
My cash-account:
While here, half-mad, half-fed, half-sarkit,
Is a' th' amount."
The ideal being whom he then saw said to him
Then never murmur nor repine,
Strive in thy humble sphere to shine ;
And trust me, not Potosi's mine,
Nor King's regard,
Can give a bliss o'ermatehing thine
A rustic Bard !
To give my counsels all in one,
Thy tuneful flame still careful fan ;
Preserve the dignity of man,
With soul erect ;
And trust, the Universal Plan
Will all protect.
And wear thou this'—she solemn said,
And bound the holly round my head.
The polish'd leaves, and berries red,
Did rustling play;
And, like a passing thought, she fled
In light away."

Was it, then, a matter of surprise that he should have
elven way to such impressions—and was it not to them
and to the whole human race a matter of proud congratula-
tion, that he had so yielded to the suggestions of the Muse
when, in the language of an immortal Englishman, " he
walked in glory and in joy upon the hill side ?" It was
the fortune of Burns to become early the admiration of all
his literary contemporaries; a memorable example of
that was to be found in a periodical publication very
popular in its day, called " The Lounger," in
which Mackenzie, best known to the world as the "Man
of Feeling," spoke of Burns as a man of first-rate genius
—as a man, who had by one step ascended the highest
pinnacle of poetical fame. If ever there was a man who
could present to the imagination pictures vivid in their
colouring, and accurately defined throughout—that man
was Burns. Alike to childhood and to mature age, to the
least practised and the most ignorant of men, as well as to
the painter and the poet, could he present images, the fide-
lity and spirit of which all men were ready to acknow-
ledge, and indeed to which the universal feeling of man-
kind bore testimony. Had these lines been ever surpassed:
" That merry day the year begins,
They bar the door on frosty winds;
The nappy reeks wi' mantling ream,
An' sheds a heart-inspiring steam :
The luntin pipe an' sneeshin mill
Are handed round, wi' right guid will;
The cantle auld folks crackin crouse—
The young apes rantin thro' the house;
My heart has been sae fain to see them,
That 1 for joy has barkit wi' them."
Burns and Sir Walter Scott, and other writers of me_
Bern times had accomplished the great object of prevent-
ing their national tongue from being lost and merged in the
language of the wealthier nation with which Scotland had
been united, and that, it no oth, r, consideration must be
acknowledged to constitute a large chin), on the part of
the man they were met to commemorate, to that distinc-
tion which he meant to conclude by proposing they should
confer. A distinguished poet, lately dead, whom he met
at the hospitable board of a friend whom he then saw near
•tiro—Mr. Murray, of Albemarle-street—called on him to
explain a passage from Sir William Julies, which he, from
his long connection with the East, might be supposed com-
petent to explain.--[The passage to which the Gallant
Officer referred, it was impossible, from the confusion
which prevailed, to catch.) He observed, that he was

enabled to answer the Noble Lord by a quotation from
Burns, to which he referred, not so much from its value
as a reply to the qtrpstion so put to him by that distin-
guished individual, as from a sense of their intrinsic value,
and their affording an evidence of that genius of which
Scotland had such just reason to be proud. They were
these :

Care, mad to see a man sae happy,
E'en drown'd himself amang the nappy ;
As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure,
The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleasure :
Kings may be blest, but 'ram was glorious,
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious !
But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed ;
Or like the snow-falls in the river,
A moment white—then melt for ever;
Or like th Borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place ;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm."
The remark made by Lord Byron, on quitting the table
of Mr. Murray, was highly honourable to the genius of
the Scottish Poet ; it was, that if ever there was truth in
inspiration, it was demonstrated in the case of Burns.—
(Applause.) He should close this short dissertation upon
the genius and writings of their immortal fellow-country-
men. He had troubled them with too many quotations
already to justify his reciting any more, and least of all
should he feel himself entitled to refer to the " Cotter's
Saturday Night," a poem too highly appreciated by youth
and age. by the high and the low, to need any eulogiums
from him. There was to be found in no work of genius
so beautiful a picture of the domestic policy and regula-
tions of the fiitnily of a cottager. He felt perfectly as-
sured that no one who heard him could fail to admit that
the writings of Burns extended their influence far beyond
the limits of Scotland—that they took effect wherever Scots-
men were to be found, " and God knows they are to be
found everywhere." He had then the satisfaction of
having seated near him two sons of Robin Burns. Four-
teen years ago, in a distant station, he felt called upon to
give such an entertainment as the circumstances of the
place afforded, to a large body of distinguished military
officers. Captain Burns, then on his left hand, was,
amongst others, invited. He (Sir J. Malcolm) told his
guests, that however high might be their stations, the son
of Robert Burns ought to take precedence of the most dis-
tinguished amongst them, and he accordingly pl iced Cap-
tain Burns at his,right hand.—(Great applause.)
" The memory of Burns" was then drunk in silence.
Capt. BURNS said that he felt more gratified than he
could express at witnessing the homage paid to the talents
of his father by so numerous an assembly, and he begged
leave to return them his most grateful thanks.
The CHAIRMAN said the next toast was one to which
he must call their peculiar attention, and to which he had
no doubt they were prepared to do honour. To the per-
son he was then to propose to them he had no doubt that
he must ascribe the extraordinary number of gentlemen
who were present, and who came prepared to do honour
to another national bard.--(Cheers). He saw another
bard, and a bard of no common fame, whose birth-day, by
a singular coincidence, fell on the same day as that of
Robin Burns, who had now ruched his sixtieth year, and
who, having never before visited London, presented to
them, in these travelling days, a most remarkable circum-
stance. He was a true Scotchman ; and that he had
never before left Scotland, that he had never before visited
the metropolis, though he had had many opportunities,
was only to be ascribed to his great affection to his native
country. —(Hear). For that affection there was not one
Scotchman present who would not, he was sure, give the
Ettrick Shepherd a most cordial reception, and drink his
health with the warmest applause—(Great cheering conti-
nued for some time). Gentlemen who did not know Mr.
Hogg could not appreciate the great satisfaction he felt
at having this extraordinary man at his right hand—
(Hear). He was, as lie described himself, a true moun-
tain bard, proud of his country, proud of his birth, and
proud of his occupation ; who had, in his various songs and
poems, made every dell of his native land—every one of its
etreams—and every one of its rills, known to his readers;
and who had the art to make them as much in love with
the beautiful scenery of his country as he was himself. He
had set before them every place that was familiar to his
own wanderings. If that extraordinary man were not
present he might go a great deal further, and place before
the. assembly his great merits as displayed in his various
productions, particularly the Queen's Wake," which he
would say, for his part, he admired more than any other
of the Shepherd's productions. He had learnt to cherish
his imaginathm in the wildest parts of creation, and that
imagination, like his native mountain, was peopled with
aerial spirits, who wandered over every part, and whom
Mr. Hogg, like his ancestors of old, had brought like a
host of invaders into England. The inspiration of the
poet who possessed the true poetic genius was above his
praise ; but he had the satisfaction of knowing that his
respected friend had many other titles, which were known
to the company, to the general approbation. He would
say no more, but wish him, after a due season of enjoy-
ment here, a safe return to that happy home which was
the greatest blessing the Almighty t ould bestow.--( Cheers.)
The Chairman concluded by quoting a verse from Mr.
Rogg's own writings, descriptive of the joys of home and
the " todlin wee things" that come to welcome a man on
his return ; and by calling on the company to drink " the
health of Mr. Hogg, the Ettriek Shepherd, with three
times three."—The toast was drunk with great enthusiasm.
Mr. Hocc mounted the table to return thanks, and was
received with great and continued applause. (We regret
that our distance from the tipper table prevented us dis
tinguishing accurately what he said.) The following ap
peared to us the substance of his ole.ervations :—He role
with feelings of great satisfaction to acknowledge the ho-
nour done him; and if it were said that he was not to
rise in the world, he would then say—looking down, as he
did, on the illustrious Chairman—that those who said that

were mistaken. He could at other times talk for the
" hour by Shrewsbury clock," but on that occasion his
heart was faint, and his tongue cleaved to the roof of his
mouth. He could not then pour out, as he could at other
times, the warm feelings of his heart, for his tongue was
unpractised to speak before such an assembly. It had long
been his ambition to attain the approbation of his country-
men as a poet; he had thought, perhaps, that he might
one day have that honour; he had ventured to hope it,
from the kind favours he had previously received ; and
when he looked round on that great assembly, who should
say that he had not attained the great object of his ambi-
tion .—(Cheers.) He had attained that object in the
iudgnaent of the literary men of this great metropolis ;
they were assembled on this occasion, and they could not
retract.—(Cheers.) It was very true, and as extraordinary
as true, that of all the 365 days in the year he was born
en the same day of the year as Robin Burns was born,
and on that very day he was 60 years old ; and he could say
more, that he was born within five minutes of the hour
when his health wa• drunk.— (Laughter and cheers.)
He could say, too, as he had frequently heard it stated,
that the night wet very dark and stormy, the waters were
out, and, when the midwife came, it was discovered that
she had ridden all the way on a horse that had belonged
to Burn■. Was it possible under such circumstances that
he should not be a poet ? As soon as he learnt that his
birth-day coincided with that of his celebrated country-
Man, lie resolved from that moment he would be a Scottish
poet through evil report and through good r, port.—
(Cheers.) He had done his best to have a son born to

Lim on the same auspicious day, but unfortunately had
not succeeded.—(Great laughter) Had be attained his
wish he was quite certain that such a son would have
been a poet greater than his father or than Burns him-
self.—...(Continued laughter.) The world had seen what
Burns had done, and he had often reflected how much
!re he would have done, had he lived to his age ; but
tiemi died too soon. His own lot had been of a higher de-
ieriPtion ; and he could say, he had no sordid motives.
" his belief, he had felt in his soul the true charm of
aretrY---he had felt himself devoted to song—and he had
b ways cherished the sentiment and the hope, that he might
e a successful bard. When he saw all the splendour
44,11 d him—saw all the literary men who were as-
Rtribled ; when he witnessed the great company which
I" Met to celebrate the birth-day of two Scotch poets,
'e could not but think the circumstance most remarkable,
while he saw his fondest hope achieved. It was to hint
4„O additional satisfaction to see at the head of the table a
i?Futchuian who raised himself to the highest dienities by
ts own merit, and of whose services in arms, and of whose
Productions in literature, his country had good reason to be
Proud —(Cheers.
Jr. Hogg is a bluff, hale, fresh-looking man, apparently
riot more than eight-and-forty, although he stated that he
b
ki attained the age of 60. His personal appearance is
Tolely, but prepoaaessing, and the expression of his face is
I
41.itny characterized by shrewdness and geod humour.
brief address was very cordially app'auded, and he was
g4in generally cheered on resuming his seat at table.
Song, by Mr. Wilson—" Land of the Seas."
the CHAIRMAN, apologising for the difficulty he felt
executing the task he had taken upon hiinself, Baia he
gad then to propose the health of another person, who was
et living, lie was happy to say, to confer long delight, he
'°Fed, on his country, as he had already delighted it from
tle 'IA to the other; and in saying that, it was not ne-
Z:.
-"'rY for him to say more to ensure the highest honours
rthe warmest reception to the name of Walter scott.--
Pat cheering.) The country might be proud which
,4 given birth to such a Iran, and it ought to be grate-
'. for the delight he bad afforded. He might expatiate
the glorits of that name, which perhaps more than any