The Weekly Kansas chief. [volume] (Troy, Kan.) 1872-1918, 1883-01-25
ROBERT BURNS.
Walt. vhifman's Estimate Of the Great
Scotch Poet.

Dear Bob! manly, witty, fond, friendly, full
of weak spots as well stroug ones-essential
type of many thOusands-perhaps the aver
age of the decent-bOrn Young men and the early
mId-aged, not only of the British Isles, but
America, too, North aud South, Just the same
Isdeed. one best part of Burns is the unq ues
tionable proof he presents of the perennial ex-
istence among the laboring classes especially
farmers, Of the finest and noblest latent poetic
elements in their blood. (Iow clear il is to me
that the average soil has always been, and is
now thickly strewn with just snch gems.) He
is well called the PiOrmGR. ''Holding the plow {"
said his brother, Gilbert, twas the favorite sit
uation with Robert for poetic compositions, and
some OF his best verses were produced while he
was at that exercise" ~ must return to my
humble station, and WOO my rustic muse in my
wonted way, at the plow-tail."-[ 1877, TO the
Earl of Buchan.
Indeed, there is something about Burns pc
culiarly acceptable to the new world, concrete
human points of view. He poetizes decent aver
age agricultural labor, and life, (whose spirit
and sympathies well as practicalities, are
much the same everywhere and treats fresh
often coarse, natural occurrences, loves, per-
sons, not like many new and some old poets, in
genteel style of gilt and china, or at second or
third removes, but in their own born atmos-
phere, laughter, sweat, JUNCTION. Perhaps no
one ever sang 'lads and lasses"-that universal
race, mainly the same, too, all ages, all lands
down ON their own plane as he has He exhib-
its no philosophy worth Mentioning; his moral
ity is hardly more than parrot talk-not bad or
deficient. but cheap. shop worn, the platitudes
of old aunts and uncles to the youngsters, (be
good boys, and keep your noses clean.) Only
when he gets at Poosie Nansie's, celebrating the
charley hree, or among tramps, or democratic
bouts and drinking generally,
tFreedom and whskey gang thegither,)
we have. in his own unmistakable color and
warmth, those interiors of rake-heliy life and
tavern inn-the cantabile of jolly beggars ca
rousing-lights and groupings of rank slee aud
brawny amOTOusness outvying the best-painted
pictures of the Dutch school, or any school
Ills many sentimental songs of love-sickness
doubtless express, after a SORT the temporary
disease of young farmers and mechanics in that
condition-but, without getting on suits, either
aesthetic or moral, | doubt if they are poetry in
any high sense.)
By America and her democracy, such poet,
/ repeat, must he kept in loving remembrance !;
but il is best that determinations he made. His
admirers (as at those anniversary suppers, over
the 'hot Scotch'l will not accept for their ia
yorite anything less than the highest rank
alongside of Homer, Shakespeare, etc. Such, in
candor, not the true friends of the AYRSHIRE
bard, who really needs different place, quite
to himself. The HAD and the Odyssey express
courage craft, full-grown heroism in situations
of danger, the sense of command and leadership,
emulation, and god like even while animal ap-
petites. The Shakspearean compositions, on
yertebers and framework. of the primary pas
sions, portray the spirit Of the feudal world +.
the Norman lord, ambitious and arrogant taller
and nobler than common men-with much I'M
derplay and gusts of heat and cold, volcanoes
and stormy seas. Burns (and some will say to
his credit) attempts none of these themes. He
pOetiZes the humor, riOtous blood, sulks, amor
Gus tOrments, fondness for the tavern, and for
cheap objective nature, with disgust at the
grim and narrow ecclesiasticism of his time and
land, of Young farmer bleak and hired
farm in Scotland, through the years and under
the circumstances of the British politics of that
time, and of his short personal career as author,
from l7S5 to 1886 He is intnitve and affection
ate, and just emerged. emerging from the
shackles of the kirk, from poverty, ignorance,
and from his own low appctites-out of which
latter, however, he never eXtricated himself. 1t
is TO be said that amid not little smoke and
gas in his poems there is in every piece spark
of fire, and now and then the real afflatus. He
has heen applauded As democratic, and with
some warrant; while Shakespeare, and with the
greatest warrant, has been called monarchieal
aristocratic, (Which he certainly isl But the
splendid personalizations of Shakespeare, formu-
lated on the largest, freest, most heroic, most
artistic mold are to me far dearer as lessons,
and more precious even models for democra-
cy, than the humlrum samples Burns presents
He has, moreover, little or no spirituality. This
is his moral flaw and defect, tried by the high
est standards. The ideal he never reached, land
yet think he leads the way to it, He gives
melodies, and now and then the simplest and
sweetest ones; but harmonies, complications,
oraturies in words. never. Il de- not speak this
in any deprccatOry sense Blessed he the mem
DRY of the manly and warm hearted Scotehman
for what he has left rs, just il isl He like
wise did not know himself, in more ways than
one Though really free and independent. he
pr;led himself in his Songs on being a reaction
list and Jacuhite
Thus, while Burns is not only not great flor
new world study. like all the rest of them) in
the sense that Isaiah and -Eschylus and the
Book of job are unquestonably gratis not tn
be mentioned with Shakespeare hardly even
with our current Tennyson and Emerson-he
has a nesting niche of his own. all fragrant,
fond aud quaint and homely-a lodge built near
but outside the mighty temple of the gods of
song and art-those universal stryers, through
their works of harmony and melody and power,
to ever show intimate mans GROWING. last
victorious fusion in himself of Real and Ideal.
Halt HkitwdH