No More Learning

A
well-ordered mind will be strengthened, as well as embellished, by
elegant knowledge, while over those naturally barren and ungenial all
that is refined or noble will pass as a sunny shower scuds over lumps
of granite, bringing neither warmth nor life.

In the account which the poet gives to Moore of his early poems, he
says little about his exquisite lyrics, and less about "The Death and
dying Words of Poor Mailie," or her "Elegy," the first of his poems
where the inspiration of the muse is visible; but he speaks with
exultation of the fame which those indecorous sallies, "Holy Willie's
Prayer" and "The Holy Tulzie" brought from some of the clergy, and the
people of Ayrshire. The west of Scotland is ever in the van, when
mutters either political or religious are agitated. Calvinism was
shaken, at this time, with a controversy among its professors, of
which it is enough to say, that while one party rigidly adhered to the
word and letter of the Confession of Faith, and preached up the palmy
and wholesome days of the Covenant, the other sought to soften the
harsher rules and observances of the kirk, and to bring moderation and
charity into its discipline as well as its councils. Both believed
themselves right, both were loud and hot, and personal,--bitter with a
bitterness only known in religious controversy. The poet sided with
the professors of the New Light, as the more tolerant were called, and
handled the professors of the Old Light, as the other party were
named, with the most unsparing severity. For this he had sufficient
cause:--he had experienced the mercilessness of kirk-discipline, when
his frailties caused him to visit the stool of repentance; and
moreover his friend Gavin Hamilton, a writer in Mauchline, had been
sharply censured by the same authorities, for daring to gallop on
Sundays. Moodie, of Riccarton, and Russel, of Kilmarnock, were the
first who tasted of the poet's wrath. They, though professors of the
Old Light, had quarrelled, and, it is added, fought: "The Holy
Tulzie," which recorded, gave at the same time wings to the scandal;
while for "Holy Willie," an elder of Mauchline, and an austere and
hollow pretender to righteousness, he reserved the fiercest of all his
lampoons. In "Holy Willie's Prayer," he lays a burning hand on the
terrible doctrine of predestination: this is a satire, daring,
personal, and profane. Willie claims praise in the singular,
acknowledges folly in the plural, and makes heaven accountable for his
sins! in a similar strain of undevout satire, he congratulates Goudie,
of Kilmarnock, on his Essays on Revealed Religion. These poems,
particularly the two latter, are the sharpest lampoons in the
language.

While drudging in the cause of the New Light controversialists, Burns
was not unconsciously strengthening his hands for worthier toils: the
applause which selfish divines bestowed on his witty, but graceless
effusions, could not be enough for one who knew how fleeting the fame
was which came from the heat of party disputes; nor was he insensible
that songs of a beauty unknown for a century to national poesy, had
been unregarded in the hue and cry which arose on account of "Holy
Willie's Prayer" and "The Holy Tulzie. " He hesitated to drink longer
out of the agitated puddle of Calvinistic controversy, he resolved to
slake his thirst at the pure well-springs of patriot feeling and
domestic love; and accordingly, in the last and best of his
controversial compositions, he rose out of the lower regions of
lampoon into the upper air of true poetry.
"The Holy Fair," though
stained in one or two verses with personalities, exhibits a scene
glowing with character and incident and life: the aim of the poem is
not so much to satirize one or two Old Light divines, as to expose and
rebuke those almost indecent festivities, which in too many of the
western parishes accompanied the administration of the sacrament. In
the earlier days of the church, when men were staid and sincere, it
was, no doubt, an impressive sight to see rank succeeding rank, of the
old and the young, all calm and all devout, seated before the tent of
the preacher, in the sunny hours of June, listening to his eloquence,
or partaking of the mystic bread and wine; but in these our latter
days, when discipline is relaxed, along with the sedate and the pious
come swarms of the idle and the profligate, whom no eloquence can
edify and no solemn rite affect. On these, and such as these, the poet
has poured his satire; and since this desirable reprehension the Holy
Fairs, east as well as west, have become more decorous, if not more
devout.

His controversial sallies were accompanied, or followed, by a series
of poems which showed that national character and manners, as Lockhart
has truly and happily said, were once more in the hands of a national
poet. These compositions are both numerous and various: they record
the poet's own experience and emotions; they exhibit the highest moral
feeling, the purest patriotic sentiments, and a deep sympathy with the
fortunes, both here and hereafter of his fellow-men; they delineate
domestic manners, man's stern as well as social hours, and mingle the
serious with the joyous, the sarcastic with the solemn, the mournful
with the pathetic, the amiable with the gay, and all with an ease and
unaffected force and freedom known only to the genius of Shakspeare.
In "The Twa Dogs" he seeks to reconcile the labourer to his lot, and
intimates, by examples drawn from the hall as well as the cottage,
that happiness resides in the humblest abodes, and is even partial to
the clouted shoe. In "Scotch Drink" he excites man to love his
country, by precepts both heroic and social; and proves that while
wine and brandy are the tipple of slaves, whiskey and ale are the
drink of the free: sentiments of a similar kind distinguish his
"Earnest Cry and Prayer to the Scotch Representatives in the House of
Commons," each of whom he exhorts by name to defend the remaining
liberties and immunities of his country. A higher tone distinguishes
the "Address to the Deil:" he records all the names, and some of them
are strange ones; and all the acts, and some of them are as whimsical
as they are terrible, of this far kenned and noted personage; to these
he adds some of the fiend's doings as they stand in Scripture,
together with his own experiences; and concludes by a hope, as
unexpected as merciful and relenting, that Satan may not be exposed to
an eternity of torments. "The Dream" is a humorous sally, and may be
almost regarded as prophetic. The poet feigns himself present, in
slumber, at the Royal birth-day; and supposes that he addresses his
majesty, on his household matters as well as the affairs of the
nation. Some of the princes, it has been satirically hinted, behaved
afterwards in such a way as if they wished that the scripture of the
Burns should be fulfilled: in this strain, he has imitated the license
and equalled the wit of some of the elder Scottish Poets.

"The Vision" is wholly serious; it exhibits the poet in one of those
fits of despondency which the dull, who have no misgivings, never
know: he dwells with sarcastic bitterness on the opportunities which,
for the sake of song, he has neglected of becoming wealthy, and is
drawing a sad parallel between rags and riches, when the muse steps in
and cheer his despondency, by assuring him of undying fame.
"Halloween" is a strain of a more homely kind, recording the
superstitious beliefs, and no less superstitious doings of Old
Scotland, on that night, when witches and elves and evil spirits are
let loose among the children of men: it reaches far back into manners
and customs, and is a picture, curious and valuable. The tastes and
feelings of husbandmen inspired "The old Farmer's Address to his old
mare Maggie," which exhibits some pleasing recollections of his days
of courtship and hours of sociality. The calm, tranquil picture of
household happiness and devotion in "the Cotter's Saturday Night," has
induced Hogg, among others, to believe that it has less than usual of
the spirit of the poet, but it has all the spirit that was required;
the toil of the week has ceased, the labourer has returned to his
well-ordered home--his "cozie ingle and his clean hearth-stane,"--and
with his wife and children beside him, turns his thoughts to the
praise of that God to whom he owes all: this he performs with a
reverence and an awe, at once natural, national, and poetic. "The
Mouse" is a brief and happy and very moving poem: happy, for it
delineates, with wonderful truth and life, the agitation of the mouse
when the coulter broke into its abode; and moving, for the poet takes
the lesson of ruin to himself, and feels the present and dreads the
future.