The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1899-01-28
BOBBY BURNS BIRTHDAY.
Mayor Gray's Brilliant Address ON the
Bard of Scotia. So .-..,

Bard OF Scotia. .-.~.,
At the celebration OF Robert Burns
anniversary in this city last Wednesday
night Mayor Gray delivered the follow
ing interesting address on the Scottish
bard:
Il am sure that unless he had per-
shaded himself that he could gid refined
gold or paint the lily no one would now
adays set himself the task Of treating
the life and poetry of Robert Burns.
The subject has been done to safety
by common thinkers. Burns has been
sunk by the muck stirrers of predatory
theology that loved to count his glasses
and punctuate its coarseness with we'll
meant wailings for his soul; he has been
geon who believed that the way to &C.
count for Burns was to separate his life
from his work, crediting his poetry to
God and charging his years of toll. dis
appointment and drink to the devil. A
! modern school has arisen that denies
that he drank to excess and a still more
| modern school has discovered that in
herited disease and not dissipation
caused his early and lamented death.
"In the midst of these hillocks of
criticism rise two mountains towering to
the heights of Burns himself. Carlyle,
the Prometheus of Scotch philosophy,
has carved Burns upon the brain of man
as though the work had been done by
Michael Angelo; Curtis, the prince of
American orators has painted him in
single address as tenderly and with as
true spirit of swelling love as Ra-
Dhael might upon his canvas. Neither
Of these seeks to separate Burns from
Scotland or Scotland from Burns. Both
have recognized that his poetry is of the
soil and that his life is Of his poetry! a..
Neither makes special lament that
he did not live longer that he might
have written more. He wrote enough
to become immortal and to make his
country we'll beloved wherever there ris
written language capable Of ,transcrib-
ing his verses. What more could he
have done had he written till old age
wagged his weary head? What less
could he have done if he had stopped
with Highland Mary and rThe Cots'
ters Saturday Night?" -.
Usually the deepest sorrow that
Burns did not write more arises among
those who have not read what he did
write. And are there no''uxamples Of
reconcile us to the truth that enough is
as good as feast? Surely Walter Scott,
toiling and dying to pay book publish
er's debt. writing such dismal Stories
as some of his later 'Waverlys', wrote
too much.
Nor is it precisely necessary to meas
ure his life by the number of years it
takes other men to get themselves out
of the worlds way. Burns is not to be
measured by the standard Of an insur-
ance actuary. By that measure he is a
failure. Nor is he to be measured by
what he did. He did nothing but write
verses, manage farm, act as exciseman
and raise family. What he is to be
judged by is the effect he produced upon
the world. BY that measure his life is
as long as time. One hundred and
twenty years after he turned the sod at
Ellisland and wrote the ode to the daisy
he is still with us. not as suit. Of
armor, like Wellington; not a fiery
chariot, like Napoleon; nor steel en-
craving, like Washington; but as q
brother man, friend, jolly roarer of
songs, noble companion. tender SYM
pathizer. He speaks for us, laughs for
us, Weeps for us; he tells our own feel
ings in his own; he sounds our indie
pendence in
The rank is but the guinea stamp
He confesses our own failings and
our own defense in -''""
What done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted
"The marvellous resistance to time
and the distraction of other literary
crops of the dialect verses of a plough
man peasant must be explained Curtiss
explains it as beautifully as words can
when he says:
In setting words to Scotch melodies
Burns turns to music the emotions COM
mon to humanity and SO he passes from
the exclusive love of Scotland into the
reverence Of the world. 1t has not been
given to many-even of poets-to SO
catch the spirit of contemporaneous life
as to see and separate the permanent
from the evanescent
Burns lived thirty-seven years. Tn
to his 18th he lived at home, and alter
nately studied and worked upon the
farm. The remaining eighteen Years of
his life he filled Scotland with his fame.
and prepared for the contemplation of
posterity the great tide of his poetry. A
sad life He was not a poet by acct
dent He felt poetry in him, and he
studied how to produce it, In early
manhood, he read collection of songs
constantly, and says: 4 pored over
them, song by song, verse by verse, care
fully noticing the true, tender or Sub
lime from affectation and fustian.'
Later in life, when he was engaged
on Mr. 'ThOmsOn'c co11ont;o, re ,,,,..a