Lyrics of Burns

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 290, 3 September 1931, Page 11

Lyrics of Burns

Sir, — “The wisest man the warl’ e’er saw, He dearly loved the lasses, O I” Solomon with his COO wives is here alluded to by Burns, whose works have recently been quoted in your letters column. I have read them carefully, and agree with “Jock Tainson” that it should be the function of a Burns club to inculcate a love of the poet's work among its members. Burns goes deep into the heart of man, like Shakespeare; and both authors are read aud studied far and wide. My opening quotation seems frivolous enough; but it opens the window to the final truism so ott repeated: “Iler prentice hand she tried on man, And then she made the lasses, Oh 1” Whether Burns’ was original in these lines: "it is a fact that in a play called ‘Cupid's Whirligig’ (1007) there was printed, ‘Man was made when Nature was an apprentice, but woman when si l6 was a skilful mistress of her art.’ ” Shakespeare and Burns are alike in this, that both improve on what they work on. . Chambers’s “Encyclopaedia ot English Literature” says: :—-Byron said of Burns, "A man may be coarse and yet not vulgar, and the reverse. Burns is often coarse, but never vulgar.” This verdict is now universally accepted. Byron placed Burns in the front rank. Of Scottish poets he is the first, the second being Dunbar, whom he scarcely if at all surpasses in biting trenchency of sarcasm, but whom he greatly surpasses in the riot of good humour and in sympathy with humanity in general. His relation to Ramsay and reverence for Fergusson and the others of the “vernacular” or Scottish renaissance school of poetry, is very much that of a master to pupils who have been preparing work in the studio for him. They gave him rhymes, including his famous “Mouse” stanza; and, in the case of Ramsay and Fergusson, subjects for treatment, points of view, even phrases and verses. What he supplemented them with was original genius of the first order, consummate art, and the power of rising from Scotland to a conception of the world as a whole. It is a familiar saying that Burns won his greatest triumphs m and with the vernacular. That saying need not be gainsaid. It must, however, be remembered that he was the superior of his predecessors in English as well as in Scottish verse. “Thou Lingering Star one of the greatest achievements in the impassioned as distinguished from the passionate, is in English. So also are “Man Was Made to Mourn.” The impassioned stanzas of the wounded bare, the “Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald” (which Carlyle terms a piece that might have been chanted by the furies of 2E. Schylus), the best half of the “Mountain Daisy,” the finest reflective and descriptive passages in Tam o Shanter,” practically the whole of the superb “Macpherson’s Farewell, Afton Water,” the “Song of Death, the “Gloomy Night is Gathering Fast, the best of “Scots’ Wae Hae. Go Fetch to me a Pint of Wine,” “Had we never loved so kindly,” and the most elevated passages in “The Vision’ and The Cotter’s Saturday Night.” Whenever, in fact, lie soared from the particular to the universal in sentiment, in humour, and in reflection, he glided from. Scotch into English.” (Chambers is a Scottish firm, so it must be taken as authonta11/ conclusion, we may say that what English was to Burns so blank verse was to Shakespeare—the vehicle for their most comprehensiv^wribngs.-^am.e tc„ Wellington, August 28.