No More Learning

"Keep it out of the way of your children," said a Cameronian divine,
when he lent it to my father, "lest ye find them, as I found mine,
reading it on the Sabbath. " No wonder that such a volume made its way
to the hearts of a peasantry whose taste in poetry had been the marvel
of many writers: the poems were mostly on topics with which they were
familiar: the language was that of the fireside, raised above the
vulgarities of common life, by a purifying spirit of expression and
the exalting fervour of inspiration: and there was such a brilliant
and graceful mixture of the elegant and the homely, the lofty and the
low, the familiar and the elevated--such a rapid succession of scenes
which moved to tenderness or tears; or to subdued mirth or open
laughter--unlooked for allusions to scripture, or touches of sarcasm
and scandal--of superstitions to scare, and of humour to
delight--while through the whole was diffused, as the scent of flowers
through summer air, a moral meaning--a sentimental beauty, which
sweetened and sanctified all. The poet's expectations from this little
venture were humble: he hoped as much money from it as would pay for
his passage to the West Indies, where he proposed to enter into the
service of some of the Scottish settlers, and help to manage the
double mystery of sugar-making and slavery.

The hearty applause which I have recorded came chiefly from the
husbandman, the shepherd, and the mechanic: the approbation of the
magnates of the west, though not less-warm, was longer in coming. Mrs.
Stewart of Stair, indeed, commended the poems and cheered their
author: Dugald Stewart received his visits with pleasure, and wondered
at his vigour of conversation as much as at his muse: the door of the
house of Hamilton was open to him, where the table was ever spread,
and the hand ever ready to help: while the purses of the Ballantynes
and the Parkers were always as open to him as were the doors of their
houses. Those persons must be regarded as the real patrons of the
poet: the high names of the district are not to be found among those
who helped him with purse and patronage in 1786, that year of deep
distress and high distinction. The Montgomerys came with their praise
when his fame was up; the Kennedys and the Boswells were silent: and
though the Cunninghams gave effectual aid, it was when the muse was
crying with a loud voice before him, "Come all and see the man whom I
delight to honour. " It would be unjust as well as ungenerous not to
mention the name of Mrs. Dunlop among the poet's best and early
patrons: the distance at which she lived from Mossgiel had kept his
name from her till his poems appeared: but his works induced her to
desire his acquaintance, and she became his warmest and surest friend.

To say the truth, Burns endeavoured in every honourable way to obtain
the notice of those who had influence in the land: he copied out the
best of his unpublished poems in a fair hand, and inserting them in
his printed volume, presented it to those who seemed slow to buy: he
rewarded the notice of this one with a song--the attentions of that
one with a sally of encomiastic verse: he left psalms of his own
composing in the manse when he feasted with a divine: he enclosed
"Holy Willie's Prayer," with an injunction to be grave, to one who
loved mirth: he sent the "Holy Fair" to one whom he invited to drink a
gill out of a mutchkin stoup, at Mauchline market; and on accidentally
meeting with Lord Daer, he immediately commemorated the event in a
sally of verse, of a strain more free and yet as flattering as ever
flowed from the lips of a court bard. While musing over the names of
those on whom fortune had smiled, yet who had neglected to smile on
him, he remembered that he had met Miss Alexander, a young beauty of
the west, in the walks of Ballochmyle; and he recorded the impression
which this fair vision made on him in a song of unequalled elegance
and melody. He had met her in the woods in July, on the 18th of
November he sent her the song, and reminded her of the circumstance
from which it arose, in a letter which it is evident he had laboured
to render polished and complimentary. The young lady took no notice of
either the song or the poet, though willing, it is said, to hear of
both now:--this seems to have been the last attempt he made on the
taste or the sympathies of the gentry of his native district: for on
the very day following we find him busy in making arrangements for his
departure to Jamaica.

For this step Burns had more than sufficient reasons: the profits of
his volume amounted to little more than enough to waft him across the
Atlantic: Wee Johnnie, though the edition was all sold, refused to
risk another on speculation: his friends, both Ballantynes and
Parkers, volunteered to relieve the printer's anxieties, but the poet
declined their bounty, and gloomily indented himself in a ship about
to sail from Greenock, and called on his muse to take farewell of
Caledonia, in the last song he ever expected to measure in his native
land.
That fine lyric, beginning "The gloomy night is gathering fast,"
was the offspring of these moments of regret and sorrow. His feelings
were not expressed in song alone: he remembered his mother and his
natural daughter, and made an assignment of all that pertained to him
at Mossgiel--and that was but little--and of all the advantage which a
cruel, unjust, and insulting law allowed in the proceeds of his poems,
for their support and behoof. This document was publicly read in the
presence of the poet, at the market-cross of Ayr, by his friend
William Chalmers, a notary public. Even this step was to Burns one of
danger: some ill-advised person had uncoupled the merciless pack of
the law at his heels, and he was obliged to shelter himself as he best
could, in woods, it is said, by day and in barns by night, till the
final hour of his departure came. That hour arrived, and his chest was
on the way to the ship, when a letter was put into his hand which
seemed to light him to brighter prospects.

Among the friends whom his merits had procured him was Dr. Laurie, a
district clergyman, who had taste enough to admire the deep
sensibilities as well as the humour of the poet, and the generosity to
make known both his works and his worth to the warm-hearted and
amiable Blacklock, who boldly proclaimed him a poet of the first rank,
and lamented that he was not in Edinburgh to publish another edition
of his poems. Burns was ever a man of impulse: he recalled his chest
from Greenock; he relinquished the situation he had accepted on the
estate of one Douglas; took a secret leave of his mother, and, without
an introduction to any one, and unknown personally to all, save to
Dugald Stewart, away he walked, through Glenap, to Edinburgh, full of
new hope and confiding in his genius. When he arrived, he scarcely
knew what to do: he hesitated to call on the professor; he refrained
from making himself known, as it has been supposed he did, to the
enthusiastic Blacklock; but, sitting down in an obscure lodging, he
sought out an obscure printer, recommended by a humble comrade from
Kyle, and began to negotiate for a new edition of the Poems of the
Ayrshire Ploughman. This was not the way to go about it: his barge had
well nigh been shipwrecked in the launch; and he might have lived to
regret the letter which hindered his voyage to Jamaica, had he not met
by chance in the street a gentleman of the west, of the name of
Dalzell, who introduced him to the Earl of Glencairn, a nobleman whose
classic education did not hurt his taste for Scottish poetry, and who
was not too proud to lend his helping hand to a rustic stranger of
such merit as Burns. Cunningham carried him to Creech, then the Murray
of Edinburgh, a shrewd man of business, who opened the poet's eyes to
his true interests: the first proposals, then all but issued, were put
in the fire, and new ones printed and diffused over the island. The
subscription was headed by half the noblemen of the north: the
Caledonian Hunt, through the interest of Glencairn, took six hundred
copies: duchesses and countesses swelled the list, and such a crowding
to write down names had not been witnessed since the signing of the
solemn league and covenant.

While the subscription-papers were filling and the new volume printing
on a paper and in a type worthy of such high patronage, Burns remained
in Edinburgh, where, for the winter season, he was a lion, and one of an
unwonted kind. Philosophers, historians, and scholars had shaken the
elegant coteries of the city with their wit, or enlightened them with
their learning, but they were all men who had been polished by polite
letters or by intercourse with high life, and there was a sameness in
their very dress as well as address, of which peers and peeresses had
become weary. They therefore welcomed this rustic candidate for the
honour of giving wings to their hours of lassitude and weariness, with a
welcome more than common; and when his approach was announced, the
polished circle looked for the advent of a lout from the plough, in
whose uncouth manners and embarrassed address they might find matter
both for mirth and wonder. But they met with a barbarian who was not at
all barbarous: as the poet met in Lord Daer feelings and sentiments as
natural as those of a ploughman, so they met in a ploughman manners
worthy of a lord: his air was easy and unperplexed: his address was
perfectly well-bred, and elegant in its simplicity: he felt neither
eclipsed by the titled nor struck dumb before the learned and the
eloquent, but took his station with the ease and grace of one born to
it.