66

"When man to man the warld o'er,
Shall brithers be and a' that."

(Loud cheers.) Gentlemen, when I reflect that wherever any half-dozen Scotchmen are assembled, there this night must be a Burns' festival, I find myself haunted by a fear that, great as our national poet undoubtedly was, the language of eulogy may reach such a pitch as to defeat its end. Great reputations are at all times liable to be assailed by the intellects which they dwarf. (Hear.) Shakspeare himself has not escaped. Some of you may remember a lively sketch by John Leech, in which that celebrated humorist represented a "young hopeful"-one of those gents in peg-tops, who put a cigar into their mouths to conceal their lack of beard-(laughter)—exclaiming, with the air of a literary aspirant whose verses had appeared in a provincial newspaper, "Haw! it's my opinion that Shakspeare is a very much overrated man." (Much laughter.) Now, what if a reaction should ensue in connection with this Burns' centenary, the result of a too exuberant apotheosis? (Hear, hear.) To be confidential with you, I had some notion of trying to throw a little shade into the picture. I began to muse upon the weaknesses and the aberrations of genius. Like Wordsworth-but in a more critical mood

his first centenary birthday, when so many are assembled in this and in other cities, and in this and in other countries, to commemorate his brief tragic life, and to do honour to his immortal name-and in the face of the solemn reflection, that not another centenary birthday of the poet can occur until all, or almost all the breathers of this world are dead," I feel that the duty I have undertaken to discharge is greatly increased in magnitude. Burns was himself peculiarly sensitive to anniversary impressions. It was on the anniversary of their last parting on earth that he addressed, in strains so fervid and memorable, the image of his "Mary in Heaven." (Cheers.) This tendency to connect past events with certain periodic returns of time, has a deep foundation in human nature, and is especially a characteristic of Scotchmen. Indeed I do not recollect in the history of any other country or race so universal a poetic revival as that which is taking place at this moment throughout Scotland, and among Scotchmen throughout the world. For months past city has been calling unto city, and town answering unto town. The manner in which this Burns' movement has spread has reminded me of the time so vividly depicted by another illustrious Scotchman, Sir Walter Scott, when the "fiery cross" was borne from village to village, and when everywhere a cry was taken up, and a common enthusiasm kindled. (Applause.) And what, in this modern instance, has been the object? Why, the sole object of this remarkable patriotic rising has been to give expression to a memory and a sentiment! Surely, such a spectacle is not without significance, or rather, I should say, is not without some deep and beautiful meaning, occurring, as it does, in the midst of an intensely industrial age. To my mind it shows that, amid all the din of machinery, the ear of mankind is still exquisitely awake to every appeal of the affections. It shows that the fresh and tender spirit which dwells in the heart of the child never wholly dies within the bosom of the man. It shows that all of us, even the strongest-the most worldly-the most money-seeking-have yet, if we would but confess it, a certain soft warm something, not always guessed by the world, beating under our left waistcoat pockets. (Applause and laughter.) How else could it be, that he who has given the most delicate and earnest utter-frame of mind, Mrs. Dunlop handed her a ance to the gentler and nobler feelings of our nature, should have left behind him such a name to conjure with? (Cheers.) "Spirits are not thus finely touched but to fine issues;" and in the multitudinous meetings of this night, I believe that some little is being done to expedite the time

"I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perish'd in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy,
Behind his plough upon the mountain side.”

My purpose was to be calm, unimpassioned,
and somewhat more censorious than the Poet
of the Lakes; but, I may as well confess to
you at once, that it melted before the fire of
Burns' genius. (Cheers.) I found that an
attempt had been made a long while ago to
tone down what was conceived to be a "Burns
mania." The example was not encouraging.
It began and ended with an old woman.
(Laughter.) Mrs. Dunlop, the early patroness
of Burns, had a venerable housekeeper-a kind
of female Caleb Balderstone, zealous for the
honour of the family, who ventured to remon-
strate with her mistress upon the impropriety of
her cultivating an acquaintance with a person
of so low a condition in life. In order to put
her respected domestic into a more charitable

manuscript copy of "The Cottar's Saturday Night," desiring that she should read it. This she of course did, and her answer was one which greatly delighted the author when it was reported to him:-" Aweel," said she, "that's verra weel, and I dinna wonder at folks o' quality being astonished; but as for me, I've

seen the same thing in my ain faither's house | light, brought twentyfold its original cost. mony a time, and he couldna hae described it The top of a superannuated shower-bath, which ony ither gate." (Laughter and cheers.) Like had been employed to drench away a poetic this worthy old Scotchwoman I completely rheumatism, was run up to a fabulous sum. Α failed in my scheme of moderating the enthusi- dilapidated coffee-pot, a pair of bellows sorely asm for Burns. I had, in fact, no alternative afflicted with asthma, and other such lumber, but to blend what loyal voice I could in the commanded prices which, had there only been universal chorus. (Applause.) To say truth, more of them and they might easily have been the time is past for attempting to lower the multiplied-might have supplied funds suffiposition of Burns among the immortals. (Hear.) cient to pension all his relations for life. At the outset I find myself confronted by a (Laughter and cheers.) But perhaps the piece success which I cannot gainsay, and for which of household furniture which excited most atI dare only try to account. The enthusiasm tention was an eight-day clock. As that article which now prevails is not a thing of yesterday. was neither made in London nor in Paris, I It began during his life. It turned the heads should not like myself to put a price upon it. of the "Tarbolton lasses," and the "belles of It was the production of a Mauchline artist. Mauchline." It shook the rafters of many a I am not aware that Mauchline has been at any masonic lodge and jovial howf in various parts time famous for clocks. (Laughter.) Perhaps of Ayrshire. On the wings of the Kilmarnock a liberal valuator might have been inclined to appress it spread over all Scotland, penetrated the praise it at-say thirty shillings. But that clock high places of learning in classic Edinburgh had been often wound up by the hand which "throned on crags," and broke in tears and penned "The Jolly Beggars, ""Tam o' Shanpenitence over the poet's grave at Dumfries. ter," "The Cottar's Saturday Night," "Scots (Loud cheers.) I say penitence, not because I wha hae wi' Wallace bled!" "My Nannie O," consider that the contemporaries of Burns were and "Auld Langsyne." (Cheers.) I will not particularly to blame for his life of struggle, say, too, that it had not many a queer story to but because his countrymen, touched by his tell about "The wee short hour ayont the early death, thought bitterly on what he had twal!" (Laughter.) At all events, it was suffered. It is not, I hold, the business of any ultimately knocked down, not at thirty-shilage to seek out and elevate its men of genius. lings, but at thirty-five pounds, the purchaser Such enterprise would be Quixotic, and liable considering himself fortunate, as the limit he to all the errors of caprice and fashion. Genius had fixed was sixty! (Loud cheers.) From of the highest kind can never indeed be known that time the Burns' furore has certainly not until proved by its own immortalness. (Cheers.) abated. Fifteen years ago it exploded in the But if, from inevitable causes, Burns found vicinity of Ayr. On that occasion 80,000 of Scotland a poor enough land to live in, it at his countrymen assembled in commemorative least proved for him a sufficiently glorious land festival. (Hear.) The object was to give a to die in. (Hear.) Ten thousand people national welcome to his three sons- -then all thronged to his funeral. Every scrap of his living, and in Scotland. At the head of that burly hand-writing became a treasure. The mighty gathering was Lord Eglinton, the noble public sorrow took visible shape in stone and representative of that house of Montgomerie, on marble. Not a favourite haunt of his but be- which the great peasant-poet had conferred imcame immediately and for ever classic. Why, mortality in song. (Cheers.) There was the the very stool on which he had sat while cor- stately and fervid Professor Wilson, who so long recting his proof-sheets in Edinburgh was ele- occupied a brilliant place in the literature of vated into an object of respect! (Cheers.) I Scotland; and who, had he been alive, would suppose it has long since been broken up into have been filling not the least conspicuous of snuffboxes. (Laughter.) (Laughter.) Thirty-eight years the Burns' chairs this night. (Cheers.) There, after his death-a longer period than his whole too, although disabled by hoarseness, was that life had been-his mausoleum was opened to other John Wilson, who, through England and admit the remains of his "bonnie Jean," and America, had sung the songs of Scotland, in all forthwith the phrenologists were at his cranium, their uproarious humour and deep tearful pathos, to ascertain whether genius like his were in any as no other man could; and who, had he been way measurable with callipers. (Laughter.) spared, would have been enjoying, at this hour, When, in the doom which overtakes all things not the least glorious of his "Nichts wi' Burns." human, his household goods came to be scattered, (Great applause.) Vast, however, as was the how marvellously had their value risen! An enthusiasm then displayed, how incalculably old fender on which he had been accustomed is it at this moment eclipsed! What chance to toast his toes, while crooning, it might be, should I have in attempting any nice balance of his immortal "Vision" in the flickering hearth- the poet's merits, in the midst of such an out

burst of hero-worship? With what face could |
I hint at failings prompted and palliated by the
manners of the peasantry and people amongst
whom his lot was cast? (Cheers.) How would
his own tender pleading rise up against me,
that, "to step aside is human?" (Hear, hear.)
Above all, might I not be stunned and shamed
with the argument that Burns is in his grave-
that "after life's fitful fever he sleeps well,"
and that the object of our meeting this night is
not to discuss the frailties of the man, but to do
honour to the genius of the bard? (Immense
cheering.) The world, gentlemen, is not easily
moved. Its plaudits are what many sigh for,
and what not a few die for. (Hear.) As Sir
Walter Scott says, "I love a hackneyed quota-
tion." I may, therefore, be pardoned for quot-
ing the familiar lines of Beattie :-
"Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar!"

ney-tops "--and how are the stalwart limbs, the rounded shoulders, and the great dark luminous eyes of the poor Ayrshire ploughman, and despised Nithsdale gauger, enlarging upon the canvas of the past! (Loud applause.) { cannot account for all this, except upon the principle that Burns was made of finer clay than falls to the ordinary lot of mortals. All of you, I daresay, remember how, in his youth, he picked the nettle-sting from the hand of a "bonnie sweet sonsie lass"-how that nettlesting became a Cupid's dart in his fiery fancy

and how love and song had a simultaneous birth in his heart. The presence of my distinguished friend, Mr. Macnee, reminds me with what charming grace and felicity he many years ago transferred that romantic incident to the canvas. (Great applause.) That, gentlemen, was but the beginning of a susceptibility which rendered him sometimes the slave and sometimes the victim of all outward impressions. But with all this exquisite tenderness Burns was every inch a man. "He had misfortunes

Yet one hundred years ago "there was a lad was born in Kyle," whose circumstances were humble-whose lot was one of hard labour-great and sma', but aye a heart abune them a'." who had not even the advantage of length of What wonder that we should "a' be proud o' life-and who yet, with matchless ease, and Robin!" (Cheers.) What wonder that we merely, as it were, by letting out his broad and should love the scenes hallowed by his song! massive nature upon the world, vaulted into (Hear, hear.) Never shall I forget the first fame, and whom a grateful nation is proud, at time I gazed upon the "banks and braes o' this day, to rank among its most illustrious bonny Doon." It was when all Ayrshire was dead. (Applause.) What spell did this man alive with the excitement and the splendours possess to exercise an influence so potent? of a great medieval pageant. How beautiful Go into the fields, and observe any plough- to me was the quietude of that sylvan scene! man at his toilful and monotonous occupation, The chivalrous procession is passed. The noand ask what chances that man has of mak- ble jousters have "folded their tents like the ing his name ring through the world, and Arabs;" he who was the Lord of the Tournadown through the "corridors of time?" Such ment occupies a vice-regal chair; and one who was the position of Burns, and yet what a tri- figured there in an humbler capacity is seated umph has been his!-a triumph infinitely ex- on an imperial throne. (Hear, hear.) What a ceeding that of all the alumni of all the uni- change in the twenty years which have elapsed! versities of his time! (Loud cheers.) The Yet to this day that sweetly-wooded stream "auld clay bigging" in which he was born wears the same aspect of tender beauty which glows in the illumination of his childhood. it did then, while its "little birds" chant forth His "priestlike father," his schoolmaster Mur- the same melodies of almost unutterable saddoch, the Annies and Nannies of his early love, ness. So, too, will it be when those now high the "rough, rude, ready-witted Rankines" of in worldly position shall be only dimly known his jovial hours, the country gentry who courted, in history, and when a new generation of and the few titled people who patronized him, Scotchmen shall assemble in grander halls, and live in the light of his genius. If he even with illustrations borrowed from a new race of paused to pity a poor horse, or hare, or mouse, poets, to celebrate the second centenary of or daisy, or to spare "the symbol dear" of auld Burns. (Cheers.) Let us not, however, on Scotland by turning his weeder-clips aside, the so joyous an occasion as this, wax melancholy. thing became from that time immortal. (Cheers.) Our national poet was a man of divers moods; How poor now do the crowns of our dead kings, and when Professor Wilson tells us that he has and the glory-wreaths of our departed conquer- heard "O Willie brew'd a peck o' maut" sung ors, appear beside the holly with its "berries red" after a Presbytery dinner, with the deep bass which Coila bound around his brows! (Cheers.) of the moderator mingling in the chorus, shall How are the images of our great ones fading-we be greatly to blame if, for a brief space, we those who walked under triumphal arches, and participate in the spirit of his more joyous mopassed between houses "peopled to the chim- ments? (Great merriment.) At the same

66

"All hail, Religion! maid divine!
Pardon a Muse sae mean as mine,
Who in her rough imperfect line,
Thus dares to name thee;
To stigmatize false friends of thine
Can ne'er defame thee!"

All

time, if any of you should shout to the waiter, | on the "unco guid" which we are apt to conGo, fetch to me a pint o' wine," I trust it sider somewhat irreverent, we find him exwill only be that he may drink "a service to claiminghis bonny lassie;" or if, altogether, we should agree to "tak a cup o' kindness yet," I trust it will not be, any more than with Burns, for the vulgar love of the liquor, but only "for auld langsyne." (Cheers and laughter.) Gentlemen, had it been possible to assemble all the admirers of Burns under one roof, you would, I daresay, have been listening at this moment to higher eloquence than mine. There was, however, no help for it but to break the mass into sections. Here are we, then, as I said at the outset, but one of a multitude of gatherings, all animated by a kindred emotion. I have too lively a recollection of the fable of the Frog and the Ox to seek to measure this meeting with the colossal demonstrations taking place elsewhere. Nevertheless, when I look around this table, and see the select and choice spirits whom I have the honour to address, I do not, I confess, altogether despair of exciting just the least possible sensation of envy on the part of some of our friends who may perhaps have soared higher and fared worse. (Hear, hear, laughter, and cheers.) At the same time, let us not be uncharitable: let us rather rejoice that the unfortunates who could not by any possibility gain admission here, have overflowed until they have filled all our other public halls! (Great laughter and applause.) Nothing but the intense humanity of Robert Burns could have given such numbers to this movement. (Hear.) But what need that I should attempt to analyse his merits? What are words when overtopped by the majesty of circumstance? How can I presume to add one stone to a cairn already towering to the heavens? In the universality of this commemoration there is an eloquence which enfeebles all speech, and a glory which dims all display. (Cheers.) Suffice it that we, as Scotchmen, feel a debt of gratitude to him who was the first to popularize the sentiment of "daring to be poor," the first to cause the truth to be widely and proudly recognized among his countrymen that, apart from the accidents of fortune, "a man's a man for a' that." (Cheers.) As our own Campbell has said,

"His lines are mottoes of the heart."

Who, let me ask, has imparted such purity to love, such warmth to friendship, such dignity to labour, such courage to misfortune, such fire to patriotism, such sovereignty to moral worth? (Great applause.) Even, too, in his first great gush of poetry, when, at Mossgiel, he put forth those racy and brilliant epistles to his brother bards, and those scathing and merciless satires

(Cheers.) Irrespectively of the floods of song
on which Burns has floated into all hearts for
ever, a certain halo of greatness surrounds his
name. Wonderful as his poems are, they ap-
pear only as broken lights of the man.
who came in contact with him seem to have
been profoundly impressed with the force and
brilliancy of his intellect. The dashing Duchess
of Gordon had never met with a man whose
conversation "carried her so completely off her
feet:" the clever Mrs. Riddell—herself an au-
thoress-declared that "poetry was actually not
his forte." (Hear.) Taking him, then, for all
in all-taking the influence of his life, and the
moral of his death-I believe that Scotland is
infinitely the better for Burns having lived.
(Cheers.) His ambition was to do something
for his country, and, if he could do no better,
to "sing a sang at least." The effect of what
he actually achieved has been to make love
sweeter, integrity bolder, hypocrisy more abash-
ed. (Applause.) The effect has been to link
the Ayr, the Lugar, and the Doon, with the
Tweed and the Yarrow, as haunts of the Scot-
tish muses through all time. (Cheers.) The
effect has been to bind Scotchmen more to
Scotland, and to make the Scotch abroad more
intensely Scotch than even their countrymen
at home. Our Scottish nationality-there is
no use to deny it, or to struggle against it—is
becoming year by year merged in the common
nationality of England. (Hear.) As, however,
the waters of the Ohio retain their distinctive
colour for miles and miles after their junction
with the Mississippi, so, in like manner, must
the Scotch as a people continue to be tinctured
with their picturesque and heroic past. (Ap-
plause.) Burns stands, as it were, proud in
his peasant garb, at the confluence of the two
nations as, in many essential characteristics, our
noblest representative man. (Cheers.) Let

but Scotchmen continue to be nurtured in the
manly spirit of Burns-then, in his own lofty
words-

"Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle."

(Loud applause.) Gentlemen, on this the hun-
dredth anniversary of our poet's birthday, let

us rise up, and, with full hearts and full glasses, do honour to his genius. Here, within these walls, we are comparatively few in number, but let us be great in enthusiasm. If, indeed, at this moment the shade of the bard is hovering over his beloved Scotland, let not ours be the least audible of the myriad voices everywhere" clanishness" as it is somewhat sarcastically swelling with the same burden. Let us, in a called, stinks in the offended nostrils of some word, drink as it deserves to be drunk-not of those not within the favoured pale. Let the with the silence of a recent bereavement, but reproach continue-I hail it as a badge of honwith the enthusiasm due to a completed re-our! (Cheers.) I wonder what character the nown, and to a glory which is still ours-" The Immortal Memory of Burns." (The toast was drank amidst cheering again and again renewed.)