No More Learning

In his earlier years the poet seems to have scattered songs as thick
as a summer eve scatters its dews; nor did he scatter them less
carelessly: he appears, indeed, to have thought much less of them than
of his poems: the sweet song of Mary Morison, and others not at all
inferior, lay unregarded among his papers till accident called them
out to shine and be admired. Many of these brief but happy
compositions, sometimes with his name, and oftener without, he threw
in dozens at a time into Johnson, where they were noticed only by the
captious Ritson: but now a work of higher pretence claimed a share in
his skill: in September, 1792, he was requested by George Thomson to
render, for his national collection, the poetry worthy of the muses of
the north, and to take compassion on many choice airs, which had
waited for a poet like the author of the Cotter's Saturday Night, to
wed them to immortal verse. To engage in such an undertaking, Burns
required small persuasion, and while Thomson asked for strains
delicate and polished, the poet characteristically stipulated that his
contributions were to be without remuneration, and the language
seasoned with a sprinkling of the Scottish dialect. As his heart was
much in the matter, he began to pour out verse with a readiness and
talent unknown in the history of song: his engagement with Thomson,
and his esteem for Johnson, gave birth to a series of songs as
brilliant as varied, and as naturally easy as they were gracefully
original. In looking over those very dissimilar collections it is not
difficult to discover that the songs which he wrote for the more
stately work, while they are more polished and elegant than those
which he contributed to the less pretending one, are at the same time
less happy in their humour and less simple in their pathos. "What
pleases _me_ as simple and naive," says Burns to Thomson, "disgusts
_you_ as ludicrous and low. For this reason 'Fye, gie me my coggie,
sirs,' 'Fye, let us a' to the bridal,' with several others of that
cast, are to me highly pleasing, while 'Saw ye my Father' delights me
with its descriptive simple pathos:" we read in these words the
reasons of the difference between the lyrics of the two collections.

The land where the poet lived furnished ready materials for song:
hills with fine woods, vales with clear waters, and dames as lovely as
any recorded in verse, were to be had in his walks and his visits;
while, for the purposes of mirth or of humour, characters, in whose
faces originality was legibly written, were as numerous in Nithsdale
as he had found them in the west. He had been reproached, while in
Kyle, with seeing charms in very ordinary looks, and hanging the
garlands of the muse on unlovely altars; he was liable to no such
censure in Nithsdale; he poured out the incense of poetry only on the
fair and captivating: his Jeans, his Lucys, his Phillises, and his
Jessies were ladies of such mental or personal charms as the
Reynolds's and the Lawrences of the time would have rejoiced to lay
out their choicest colours on. But he did not limit himself to the
charms of those whom he could step out to the walks and admire: his
lyrics give evidence of the wandering of his thoughts to the distant
or the dead--he loves to remember Charlotte Hamilton and Mary
Campbell, and think of the sighs and vows on the Devon and the Doon,
while his harpstrings were still quivering to the names of the Millers
and the M'Murdos--to the charms of the lasses with golden or with
flaxen locks, in the valley where he dwelt. Of Jean M'Murdo and her
sister Phillis he loved to sing; and their beauty merited his strains:
to one who died in her bloom, Lucy Johnston, he addressed a song of
great sweetness; to Jessie Lewars, two or three songs of gratitude and
praise: nor did he forget other beauties, for the accomplished Mrs.
Riddel is remembered, and the absence of fair Clarinda is lamented in
strains both impassioned and pathetic.

But the main inspirer of the latter songs of Burns was a young woman
of humble birth: of a form equal to the most exquisite proportions of
sculpture, with bloom on her cheeks, and merriment in her large bright
eyes, enough to drive an amatory poet crazy. Her name was Jean
Lorimer; she was not more than seventeen when the poet made her
acquaintance, and though she had got a sort of brevet-right from an
officer of the army, to use his southron name of Whelpdale, she loved
best to be addressed by her maiden designation, while the poet chose
to veil her in the numerous lyrics, to which she gave life, under the
names of "Chloris," "The lass of Craigie-burnwood," and "The lassie
wi' the lintwhite locks. " Though of a temper not much inclined to
conceal anything, Burns complied so tastefully with the growing demand
of the age for the exterior decencies of life, that when the scrupling
dames of Caledonia sung a new song in her praise, they were as
unconscious whence its beauties came, as is the lover of art, that the
shape and gracefulness of the marble nymph which he admires, are
derived from a creature who sells the use of her charms indifferently
to sculpture or to love.
Fine poetry, like other arts called fine,
springs from "strange places," as the flower in the fable said, when
it bloomed on the dunghill; nor is Burns more to be blamed than was
Raphael, who painted Madonnas, and Magdalens with dishevelled hair and
lifted eyes, from a loose lady, whom the pope, "Holy at Rome--here
Antichrist," charitably prescribed to the artist, while he laboured in
the cause of the church. Of the poetic use which he made of Jean
Lorimer's charms, Burns gives this account to Thomson. "The lady of
whom the song of Craigie-burnwood was made is one of the finest women
in Scotland, and in fact is to me in a manner what Sterne's Eliza was
to him--a mistress, or friend, or what you will, in the guileless
simplicity of platonic love. I assure you that to my lovely friend you
are indebted for many of my best songs. Do you think that the sober
gin-horse routine of my existence could inspire a man with life and
love and joy--could fire him with enthusiasm, or melt him with pathos,
equal to the genius of your book? No! no! Whenever I want to be more
than ordinary in song--to be in some degree equal to your diviner
airs--do you imagine I fast and pray for the celestial emanation?
Quite the contrary. I have a glorious recipe; the very one that for
his own use was invented by the divinity of healing and poesy, when
erst he piped to the flocks of Admetus. I put myself in a regimen of
admiring a fine woman; and in proportion to the adorability of her
charms, in proportion are you delighted with my verses. The lightning
of her eye is the godhead of Parnassus, and the witchery of her smile,
the divinity of Helicon. "

Most of the songs which he composed under the influences to which I
have alluded are of the first order: "Bonnie Lesley," "Highland Mary,"
"Auld Rob Morris," "Duncan Gray," "Wandering Willie," "Meg o' the
Mill," "The poor and honest sodger," "Bonnie Jean," "Phillis the
fair," "John Anderson my Jo," "Had I a cave on some wild distant
shore," "Whistle and I'll come to you, my lad," "Bruce's Address to
his men at Bannockburn," "Auld Lang Syne," "Thine am I, my faithful
fair," "Wilt thou be my dearie," "O Chloris, mark how green the
groves," "Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair," "Their groves of
sweet myrtle," "Last May a braw wooer came down the long glen," "O
Mally's meek, Mally's sweet," "Hey for a lass wi' a tocher," "Here's
a health to ane I loe dear," and the "Fairest maid on Devon banks. "
Many of the latter lyrics of Burns were more or less altered, to put
them into better harmony with the airs, and I am not the only one who
has wondered that a bard so impetuous and intractable in most matters,
should have become so soft and pliable, as to make changes which too
often sacrificed the poetry for the sake of a fuller and more swelling
sound. It is true that the emphatic notes of the music must find their
echo in the emphatic words of the verse, and that words soft and
liquid are fitter for ladies' lips, than words hissing and rough; but
it is also true that in changing a harsher word for one more
harmonious the sense often suffers, and that happiness of expression,
and that dance of words which lyric verse requires, lose much of their
life and vigour. The poet's favourite walk in composing his songs was
on a beautiful green sward on the northern side of the Nith, opposite
Lincluden: and his favourite posture for composition at home was
balancing himself on the hind legs of his arm-chair.