No More Learning

The moderate gain
which those dark days of agriculture brought to the economical farmer,
was not obtained: the close, the all but niggardly care by which he
could win and keep his crown-piece,--gold was seldom in the farmer's
hand,--was either above or below the mind of the poet, and Mossgiel,
which, in the hands of an assiduous farmer, might have made a
reasonable return for labour, was unproductive, under one who had
little skill, less economy, and no taste for the task.

Other reasons for his failure have been assigned. It is to the credit
of the moral sentiments of the husbandmen of Scotland, that when one
of their class forgets what virtue requires, and dishonours, without
reparation, even the humblest of the maidens, he is not allowed to go
unpunished. No proceedings take place, perhaps one hard word is not
spoken; but he is regarded with loathing by the old and the devout; he
is looked on by all with cold and reproachful eyes--sorrow is foretold
as his lot, sure disaster as his fortune; and is these chance to
arrive, the only sympathy expressed is, "What better could he expect? "
Something of this sort befel Burns: he had already satisfied the kirk
in the matter of "Sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess," his daughter,
by one of his mother's maids; and now, to use his own words, he was
brought within point-blank of the heaviest metal of the kirk by a
similar folly. The fair transgressor, both for her fathers and her own
youth, had a large share of public sympathy. Jean Armour, for it is of
her I speak, was in her eighteenth year; with dark eyes, a handsome
foot, and a melodious tongue, she made her way to the poet's
heart--and, as their stations in life were equal, it seemed that they
had only to be satisfied themselves to render their union easy. But
her father, in addition to being a very devout man, was a zealot of
the Old Light; and Jean, dreading his resentment, was willing, while
she loved its unforgiven satirist, to love him in secret, in the hope
that the time would come when she might safely avow it: she admitted
the poet, therefore, to her company in lonesome places, and walks
beneath the moon, where they both forgot themselves, and were at last
obliged to own a private marriage as a protection from kirk censure.
The professors of the Old Light rejoiced, since it brought a scoffing
rhymer within reach of their hand; but her father felt a twofold
sorrow, because of the shame of a favourite daughter, and for having
committed the folly with one both loose in conduct and profane of
speech. He had cause to be angry, but his anger, through his zeal,
became tyrannous: in the exercise of what he called a father's power,
he compelled his child to renounce the poet as her husband and burn
the marriage-lines; for he regarded her marriage, without the kirk's
permission, with a man so utterly cast away, as a worse crime than her
folly. So blind is anger! She could renounce neither her husband nor
his offspring in a lawful way, and in spite of the destruction of the
marriage lines, and renouncing the name of wife, she was as much Mrs.
Burns as marriage could make her. No one concerned seemed to think so.
Burns, who loved her tenderly, went all but mad when she renounced
him: he gave up his share of Mossgiel to his brother, and roamed,
moody and idle, about the land, with no better aim in life than a
situation in one of our western sugar-isles, and a vague hope of
distinction as a poet.
How the distinction which he desired as a poet was to be obtained,
was, to a poor bard in a provincial place, a sore puzzle: there were
no enterprising booksellers in the western land, and it was not to be
expected that the printers of either Kilmarnock or Paisley had money
to expend on a speculation in rhyme: it is much to the honour of his
native county that the publication which he wished for was at last
made easy. The best of his poems, in his own handwriting, had found
their way into the hands of the Ballantynes, Hamiltons, Parkers, and
Mackenzies, and were much admired. Mrs. Stewart, of Stair and Afton, a
lady of distinction and taste, had made, accidentally, the
acquaintance both of Burns and some of his songs, and was ready to
befriend him; and so favourable was the impression on all hands, that
a subscription, sufficient to defray the outlay of paper and print,
was soon filled up--one hundred copies being subscribed for by the
Parkers alone. He soon arranged materials for a volume, and put them
into the hands of a printer in Kilmarnock, the Wee Johnnie of one of
his biting epigrams. Johnnie was startled at the unceremonious freedom
of most of the pieces, and asked the poet to compose one of modest
language and moral aim, to stand at the beginning, and excuse some of
those free ones which followed: Burns, whose "Twa Dogs" was then
incomplete, finished the poem at a sitting, and put it in the van,
much to his printer's satisfaction. If the "Jolly Beggars" was omitted
for any other cause than its freedom of sentiment and language, or
"Death and Doctor Hornbook" from any other feeling than that of being
too personal, the causes of their exclusion have remained a secret. It
is less easy to account for the emission of many songs of high merit
which he had among his papers: perhaps he thought those which he
selected were sufficient to test the taste of the public. Before he
printed the whole, he, with the consent of his brother, altered his
name from Burness to Burns, a change which, I am told, he in after
years regretted.

In the summer of the year 1786, the little volume, big with the hopes
and fortunes of the bard made its appearance: it was entitled simply,
"Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect; by Robert Burns;" and
accompanied by a modest preface, saying, that he submitted his book to
his country with fear and with trembling, since it contained little of
the art of poesie, and at the best was but a voice given, rude, he
feared, and uncouth, to the loves, the hopes, and the fears of his own
bosom. Had a summer sun risen on a winter morning, it could not have
surprised the Lowlands of Scotland more than this Kilmarnock volume
surprised and delighted the people, one and all. The milkmaid sang his
songs, the ploughman repeated his poems; the old quoted both, and
ever the devout rejoiced that idle verse had at last mixed a tone of
morality with its mirth. The volume penetrated even into Nithsdale.
"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.