Edited
by Frank R. Shaw, FSA Scot, Dawsonville, GA, USA
Email:
jurascot@earthlink.net
For the past two weeks, Susan
and I have been traveling and as we sat in our hotel room in Paris, I began
to mull over what to put on the Robert Burns Lives! web site this
week. Corey Andrews kept popping up in my mind. He is Associate Professor in
the Department of English at
Youngstown State
University. I’ve never asked Corey for an article to have him say no. He
is an enthusiastic Burnsian with an outstanding scholarly background, giving
him great standing within the Burns academic community. Just as importantly,
Corey is esteemed by laymen like me. So, as I reached out to him from across
the Atlantic with a request for an article, Corey’s immediate reply was:
“Frank, so nice to hear from you. I’d be happy to send along my article for
Robert Burns Lives! Let me know and I’ll send it along asap. Best,
Corey”
I must tell you it doesn’t get
much better than that for a fellow who does not mind begging for Burns. From
our emails back and forth I learned that Corey is working on a larger
project called Reading Robert Burns: Gender, Reputation, and Reception,
1776 - 2009, and the article below is part of that much anticipated
essay. Visions of a Paris dateline soon disappeared because of a compact
schedule coming to a rapid close, a last-night dinner with Parisian friends,
and a 10½ hour flight back to Atlanta staring us in the face.
Thanks again, Corey, for always
“being there” when called upon to assist with our web site. However, you can
keep that cold weather up your way and not let it slip down South again! By
leaving for London a day earlier than scheduled, we were able to get out of
Atlanta before the snow and freezing rain descended on the area and shut
down the world’s busiest airport for two days. How bad was it? Grandkids Ian
and Stirling enjoyed an entire week out of school! We missed the beauty and
misery that comes with snow-covered hills, impassable roads, lost
electricity, empty bread shelves and sold-out milk cases. Yes, we had mighty
cold weather in London, Glasgow and Paris, but Corey’s article on our Bard,
Robert Burns, will warm your hearts as today we remember and celebrate his
252nd birthday!
(FRS: 1.25.11)
Robert Burns’s Reputation as the
“Genius” of Scotland
By Dr. Corey E. Andrews
Dr. Corry E. Andrews
Critical responses to Robert
Burns’s works beginning in 1786 reveals a consistent pattern of critical
reception; the poet’s “body of work” (both textually and biographically) is
apprehended through the lens of “genius” theory! In an unsigned notice in
Edinburgh Magazine, a literary miscellany which had reprinted poems by
Burns, the reviewer (most likely James Sibbald, the magazine’s publisher)
suggests that “the poems we have just announced may probably have to
struggle with the pride of learning and the partiality of indulgence.”
In spite of such partial treatment, the reviewer nonetheless claims that
“they are entitled to particular indulgence.”
To answer this, the reviewer sketches a series of revealing questions that
interrogate the would-be poet Robert Burns from the perspective of a “surly
critic”:
Who are you Mr. Burns? … At what
university have you been educated? what languages do you understand? what
authors have you particularly studied? whether has Aristotle or Horace
directed your taste? who has praised your poems, and under whose patronage
are they published? In short, what qualifications entitle you to instruct or
entertain us?iv
In response to the “surly
critic,” the reviewer imagines that “perhaps poor honest Robert Burns would
make no satisfactory answers." Burns’s “unsatisfactory” reply is just as
interesting as the surly critic’s questions, particularly as it relates to
the notion of literary legitimacy:
“I am a poor country man; I was
bred up at the school of Kilmarnock; I understand no languages but my own; I
have studied Allan Ramsay and Ferguson [sic]. My poems have been praised at
many a fire-side; and I ask no patronage for them, if they deserve none. I
have not looked on mankind through the spectacle of books. An ounce
of mother wit, you know, is worth a pound of clergy; and Homer and Ossian,
for any thing that I have heard, could neither write nor read.”vi
This remarkable response
underscores several significant strains in the reception of Burns’s life
story and body of work. The references to Homer and Ossian particularly are
apropos in this act of redefinition; the reviewer states (in what becomes a
refrain of later critical responses to Burns) that the poet is “a striking
example of native genius bursting through the obscurity of poverty and the
obstructions of laborious life." An anomaly in this review, however, is
found in the judgment that Burns is inferior to both Ramsay and Fergusson:
“those who view him with the severity of lettered criticism, and judge him
by the fastidious rules of art, will discover that he has not the doric
simplicity of Ramsay, nor the brilliant imagination of Ferguson [sic].”
Despite these failings, Burns is dignified at the review’s close by a direct
comparison to Horace’s Ofellus, whom the reviewer finds especially fitting
model for Burns: “Rusticus abnormis sapiens, crassaque Minerva.”ix
A letter from “Allan Ramsay”
that appeared in the Edinburgh Evening Courant from 13 November 1786
confirms the general thrust of the review in the Edinburgh Magazine;
“Ramsay” praises the arrival of a provincial “rarity” who can compete in the
literary field for the honor of his country. He writes that “this part of
the kingdom has not produced many poets, and therefore, when a rarity of the
kind appears, it becomes the business of those whose fortune and situation
enable them to promote the cultivation of genius to lend him
assistance to such a laudable pursuit.” This leads to the main purpose of
the letter, which is to deride the potential patrons of Ayr who have not
stepped up to “cultivate” the “genius” of Burns; the current situation, in
the view of “Ramsay,” is pitiful indeed. He complains that no “attempt [has]
been made in [Burns’s] favour. His poems are read, his genius is applauded,
and he is left to his fate. It is a reflection on the country and a disgrace
to humanity.”xi
Such high-toned rhetoric occasioned the indignant reply of Gavin Hamilton,
who defended the honor of Ayrshire by noting the numerous subscribers to
Burns’s 1786 Kilmarnock edition.
Nevertheless, the letter by “Ramsay,” like the review in the Edinburgh
Magazine, sets the mold for much future criticism of Burns in its
representation of the poet and the poetry as provincial, exceptional, and
outside the “normal” mode of literary production. “Ramsay” admits that “to
this self-taught poet I am an entire stranger,” yet he argues that “his
productions have afforded me so much pleasure that if this hint should an
emulation in that county to rescue from penury a genius which, if
unprotected, will probably sink into obscurity, I will most cheerfully
contribute to it.”
Such impulses to charity mark the course of contemporary responses to Burns
and seek to legitimize the poet through the act (and recognition) of
patronage.
The first, most influential
review of the 1786 Kilmarnock edition, that of Henry Mackenzie in The
Lounger (9 December 1786), begins with an invocation to the concept of
“genius” that is more focused on reflective response than participatory
engagement: “To the feeling and the susceptible there is something
wonderfully pleasing in the contemplation of genius, of that supereminent
reach of mind by which some men are distinguished." This interesting comment
is amplified by reference to Burns as a “genius of no ordinary rank,” whose
discovery has occasioned much delightful contemplation.xv
As in the previous responses in the Edinburgh Magazine and
Edinburgh Evening Courant, Burns’s strangeness—due to both his class and
provincial identities—is the main source of the public interest surrounding
the poet. Mackenzie exploits this in his review, first claiming that the
“divinity of genius … is best arrayed in the darkness of distant and remote
periods.”xvi
The appeal of Ossian depended upon such perceptions for its spectacular
effect upon audiences captivated by such an apparently “distant and remote”
voice. Mackenzie observes, however, that while “it may be true, that ‘in the
olden time’ genius had some advantages which tended to its vigour and
growth,” nevertheless “even in these degenerate days, it rises much oftener
than it is observed.”
Unlike the “mute inglorious Miltons” of Gray’s “Elegy,” the
subject of Mackenzie’s review has had the good fortune to be discovered by a
critic who can recognize (and promote) his talent. As Mackenzie rather slyly
quips, “there is … a natural, and indeed a fortunate vanity in trying to
redress the wrong which genius is exposed to suffer.”
And so proceeds (in Donald Low’s words) “the most influential
contemporary account of [Burns’s] poetry.
Mackenzie isolates specific character traits
(based solely, of course, on inference from the poems) that are the sources
of Burns’s “genius”: “Burns possesses the spirit as well as the fancy
of a poet. That honest pride and independence of soul which are sometimes
the muse’s only dower, break forth on every occasion in his work.”
Analyzing such works as “The Vision,” “Despondency,” “Invocation
to Ruin,” “Man was Made to Mourn,” “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,” “To a
Mouse,” and “To a Mountain Daisy,” Mackenzie claims that Burns’s “power of
genius is not less admirable in tracing the manners, than in painting the
passions, or in drawing the scenery of Nature. In what would become a
critical commonplace, Mackenzie likens Burns to Shakespeare in poetry that
“discerns the characters of men. In another soon-to-be critical commonplace,
Mackenzie isolates Burns’s language usage in order to underscore the poet’s
strangeness and “difficulty”: Mackenzie writes that “even in Scotland, the
provincial dialect which Ramsay and he have used, is now read with a
difficulty which greatly damps the pleasure of the reader; in England it
cannot be read at all, without such a constant reference to a glossary, as
nearly to destroy that pleasure.” Of Burns’s more accessible works,
Mackenzie concedes that “some … are almost English.
The eruption of Burns’s “spirit” and “fancy” in
his “almost English” poems speaks not only to his poetic skill but also to
his character, especially his differentiation from others in his class and
locale. In a sentence that would provide a phrase—“the Heaven-taught
ploughman”—that dogged Burns throughout his career, Mackenzie marveled at
the poet’s ability to understand and empathize with others: “with what
uncommon penetration and sagacity this Heaven-taught ploughman, from
his humble and unlettered station, has looked upon men and manners. Indeed,
such “penetration and sagacity” allow Burns to avoid charges of “libertinism
and irreligion” because “a mind so enlightened as our Poet’s” could not
condone the “ignorance and fanaticism of the lower class of people in the
country where these poems were written.”xxvii
Thus, Burns’s “lighter Muse” could not be “the enemy of religion” but rather
“the champion of morality, and the friend of virtue.”
As in the letter in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, Mackenzie notably
ends his review with an injunction for readers (particularly Scots) to
prevent this distinctive Scottish genius from emigrating to the West Indies
by providing suitable emolument:
To repair the wrongs of suffering or neglected
merit; to call forth genius from the obscurity in which it had pined
indignant, and place it where it may profit or delight the world; these are
the exertions which give to wealth an enviable superiority, to greatness and
to patronage a laudable pride.xxix
In the eyes of contemporary critics Andrew Noble
and Patrick Scott Hogg, “Henry Mackenzie was probably the most sustained,
malign influence on Burns’s reputation. There may be a case for such a view,
but it is hard to find support for it within Mackenzie’s assessment of
Burns’s “genius” in The Lounger review.
Notes:
For critical discussion of “genius
theory,” see Tim Burke, “Ann Yearsley and the Distribution of Genius in
Early Romantic Culture,” Early
Romantics: Perspectives in British Poetry from Pope to Wordsworth,
ed. Thomas Woodman (New York, 1998), 215-232. For contemporary analysis of
“genius,” see Alexander Gerard,
An Essay on Genius (London,
1774).
Low 64. This is the only early reference
that I have discovered which judges Burns as inferior to Ramsay and
Fergusson.
Low 64. This translates as “a
peasant, a philospher, unschooled and of rough mother-wit.”
Low 65. Emphasis mine. The metaphor of
“cultivation” is also a frequent refrain in discussions of Burns’s “genius.”
See Low, 66 for Hamilton’s response to
“Ramsay” in the Edinburgh
Evening Courant.
Low 67, See for example Howard Gaskill,
ed. The Reception of Ossian in
Europe (London, 2004) and Fiona
Stafford, The Sublime Savage: A
Study of James Macpherson and the Poems of Ossian
(Edinburgh, 1988).
Low, 69. For the comparison of Burns to
Shakespeare, one can find it as early as Ralph Waldo Emerson; see his
Miscellanies
(Boston, 1911) for evidence of this comparison.
Low, 69. On the general perceptions of the
“difficulty” of Scots, see James G. Basker, “Scotticisms and the Problem of
Cultural Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Eighteenth-Century Life
15 (1991): 81-95.
Low, 69. On Burns’s “English” poetry, see
Corey E. Andrews, “‘Almost the Same, but Not Quite’: English Poetry by
Eighteenth-Century Scots,” The
Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation
47.1 (2007): 59-79.
Low, 70. Emphasis mine.
Low, 71. Andrew Noble and Patrick
Scott Hogg, eds., The Canongate Burns (Edinburgh, 2001). They support
this assertion by pointing to Mackenzie’s behavior towards Burns after the
Lounger review had helped to catapult the poet out of obscurity:
“fanatically partisan, status obsessed, politically scared, Mackenzie so
hated his reforming and radical political enemies that he could not speak
their names. To do so would give them a credibility he utterly sought to
deny. For Mackenzie the radical was equivalent to the bestial” |