Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume II Part 9

"And in the case of Robert," said the old man, "our clergy have been strict to the very letter. They're guid men an' faithfu' ministers; but ane o' them, at least, an' he a leader, has a harsh, ill temper, an'

mistakes sometimes the corruption o' the auld man in him for the proper zeal o' the new ane. Nor is there ony o' the ithers wha kent what they had to deal wi' when Robert cam afore them. They saw but a proud, thrawart ploughman, that stood uncow'ring under the glunsh o' a hail session; and so they opened on him the artillery o' the kirk, to bear down his pride. Wha could hae told them that they were but frushing their straw an' rotten wood against the iron scales o' Leviathan? An'

now that they hae dune their maist, the record o' Robert's mishanter is lying in whity-brown ink yonder in a page o' the session-buik, while the ballads hae sunk deep deep intil the very mind o' the country, and may live there for hunders and hunders o' years."

"You seem to contrast, in this business," I said, "our better with what you must deem our inferior clergy. You mean, do you not, the higher and lower parties in our church? How are they getting on now?"

"Never worse," replied the old man; "an', oh, it's surely ill when the ministers o' peace become the very leaders o' contention! But let the blame rest in the right place. Peace is surely a blessing frae Heaven--no a guid wark demanded frae man; an' when it grows our duty to be in war, it's an ill thing to be in peace. Our Evangelicals are stan'in', puir folk, whar their faithers stood; an' if they maun either fight or be beaten frae their post, why, it's just their duty to fight.

But the Moderates are rinnin' mad a'thegither amang us: signing our auld Confession, just that they may get intil the kirk to preach against it; paring the New Testament doun to the vera standard o' heathen Plawto; and sinking ae doctrine after anither, till they leave ahint naething but deism that might scunner an infidel. Deed, Matthew, if there comena a change among them, an' that sune, they'll swamp the puir kirk a'

thegither. The cauld morality that never made ony ane mair moral, taks nae hand o' the people; an' patronage, as meikle's they roose it, winna keep up either kirk or manse o' itsel. Sorry I am, sin' Robert has entered on the quarrel at a', it suld hae been on the wrang side."

"One of my chief objections," I said, "to the religion of the Moderate party is, that it is of no use."

"A gey serious ane," rejoined the old man; "but maybe there's a waur still. I'm unco vexed for Robert, baith on his worthy faither's account and his ain. He's a fearsome fellow when ance angered, but an honest, warm-hearted chield for a' that; an' there's mair sense in yon big head o' his, than in ony ither twa in the country."

"Can you tell me aught," said the north country gentleman, addressing my companion, "of Mr. R----, the chapel minister in K----? I was once one of his pupils in the far north; but I have heard nothing of him since he left Cromarty."

"Why," rejoined the old man, "he's just the man that, mair nor a' the rest, has borne the brunt o' Robert's fearsome waggery. Did ye ken him in Cromarty, say ye?"

"He was parish schoolmaster there," said the gentleman, "for twelve years; and for six of these I attended his school. I cannot help respecting him; but no one ever loved him. Never surely was there a man at once so unequivocally honest and so thoroughly unamiable."

"You must have found him a rigid disciplinarian," I said.

"He was the most so," he replied, "from the days of Dionysius, at least, that ever taught a school. I remember there was a poor fisher boy among us named Skinner, who, as is customary in Scottish schools, as you must know, blew the horn for gathering the scholars, and kept the catalogue and the key; and who, in return, was educated by the master, and received some little gratuity from the scholars besides. On one occasion, the key dropped out of his pocket; and, when school-time came, the irascible dominie had to burst open the door with his foot. He raged at the boy with a fury so insane, and beat him so unmercifully, that the other boys, gathering heart in the extremity of the case, had to rise _en ma.s.se_ and tear him out of his hands. But the curious part of the story is yet to come: Skinner has been a fisherman for the last twelve years; but never has he been seen disengaged, for a moment, from that time to this, without mechanically thrusting his hand into the key pocket."

Our companion furnished us with two or three other anecdotes of Mr.

R----. He told us of a lady who was so overcome by sudden terror on unexpectedly seeing him, many years after she had quitted his school, in one of the pulpits of the south, that she fainted away; and of another of his scholars, named M'Glashan, a robust, daring fellow of six feet, who, when returning to Cromarty from some of the colonies, solaced himself by the way with thoughts of the hearty drubbing with which he was to clear off all his old scores with the dominie.

"Ere his return, however," continued the gentleman, "Mr. R---- had quitted the parish; and, had it chanced otherwise, it is questionable whether M'Glashan, with all his strength and courage, would have gained anything in an encounter with one of the boldest and most powerful men in the country."

Such were some of the chance glimpses which I gained, at this time, of by far the most powerful of the opponents of Burns. He was a good, conscientious man; but unfortunate in a harsh, violent temper, and in sometimes mistaking, as my old townsman remarked, the dictates of that temper for those of duty.

CHAPTER VI.

"It's hardly in a body's pow'r To keep at times frae being sour, To see how things are shar'd-- How best o' chiels are whiles in want, While coofs on countless thousands rant, And kenna how to wair't."--_Epistle to Davie._

I visited my friend, a few days after my arrival in Irvine, at the farm-house of Mossgiel, to which, on the death of his father, he had removed, with his brother Gilbert and his mother. I could not help observing that his manners were considerably changed: my welcome seemed less kind and hearty than I could have antic.i.p.ated from the warm-hearted peasant of five years ago, and there was a stern and almost supercilious elevation in his bearing, which at first pained and offended me. I had met with him as he was returning from the fields after the labours of the day; the dusk of twilight had fallen; and, though I had calculated on pa.s.sing the evening with him at the farm-house of Mossgiel, so displeased was I, that, after our first greeting, I had more than half changed my mind. The recollection of his former kindness to me, however, suspended the feeling, and I resolved on throwing myself on his hospitality for the night, however cold the welcome.

"I have come all the way from Irvine to see you, Mr. Burns," I said.

"For the last five years, I have thought more of my mother and you than of any other two persons in the country. May I not calculate, as of old, on my supper and a bed?"

There was an instantaneous change in his expression.

"Pardon me, my friend," he said, grasping my hand; "I have, unwittingly, been doing you wrong; one may surely be the master of an Indiaman and in possession of a heart too honest to be spoiled by prosperity!"

The remark served to explain the haughty coldness of his manner which had so displeased me, and which was but the unwillingly a.s.sumed armour of a defensive pride.

"There, brother," he said, throwing down some plough irons which he carried, "send _wee Davoc_ with these to the smithy, and bid him tell Rankin I won't be there to-night. The moon is rising, Mr. Lindsay--shall we not have a stroll together through the coppice?"

"That of all things," I replied; and, parting from Gilbert, we struck into the wood.

The evening, considering the lateness of the season, for winter had set in, was mild and pleasant. The moon at full was rising over the c.u.mnock hills, and casting its faint light on the trees that rose around us, in their winding-sheets of brown and yellow, like so many spectres, or that, in the more exposed glares and openings of the wood, stretched their long naked arms to the sky. A light breeze went rustling through the withered gra.s.s; and I could see the faint twinkling of the falling leaves, as they came showering down on every side of us.

"We meet in the midst of death and desolation," said my companion--"we parted when all around us was fresh and beautiful. My father was with me then, and--and Mary Campbell--and now"----

"Mary! your Mary!" I exclaimed--"the young--the beautiful--alas! is she also gone?"

"She has left me," he said--"left me. Mary is in her grave!"

I felt my heart swell, as the image of that loveliest of creatures came rising to my view in all her beauty, as I had seen her by the river side; and I knew not what to reply.

"Yes," continued my friend, "she's in her grave;--we parted for a few days, to re-unite, as we hoped, for ever; and, ere these few days had pa.s.sed, she was in her grave. But I was unworthy of her--unworthy even then; and now---- But she is in her grave!"

I grasped his hand. "It is difficult," I said, "to _bid_ the heart submit to these dispensations, and, oh, how utterly impossible to bring it to _listen_! But life--_your_ life, my friend--must not be pa.s.sed in useless sorrow. I am convinced, and often have I thought of it since our last meeting, that yours is no vulgar destiny--though I know not to what it tends."

"Downwards!" he exclaimed--"it tends downwards;--I see, I feel it;--the anchor of my affection is gone, and I drift sh.o.r.eward on the rocks."

"'Twere ruin," I exclaimed, "to think so!"

"Not half an hour ere my father died," he continued, "he expressed a wish to rise and sit once more in his chair; and we indulged him. But, alas! the same feeling of uneasiness which had prompted the wish, remained with him still, and he sought to return again to his bed. 'It is not by quitting the bed or the chair,' he said, 'that I need seek for ease: it is by quitting the body.' I am oppressed, Mr. Lindsay, by a somewhat similar feeling of uneasiness, and, at times, would fain cast the blame on the circ.u.mstances in which I am placed. But I may be as far mistaken as my poor father. I would fain live at peace with all mankind--nay, more, I would fain love and do good to them all; but the villain and the oppressor come to set their feet on my very neck, and crush me into the mire--and must I not resist? And when, in some luckless hour, I yield to my pa.s.sions--to those fearful pa.s.sions that must one day overwhelm me--when I yield, and my whole mind is darkened by remorse, and I groan under the discipline of conscience, then comes the odious, abominable hypocrite--the devourer of widows' houses and the substance of the orphan--and demands that my repentance be as public as his own hollow, detestable prayers. And can I do other than resist and expose him? My heart tells me it was formed to bestow--why else does every misery that I cannot relieve render me wretched? It tells me, too, it was formed not to receive--why else does the proffered a.s.sistance of even a friend fill my whole soul with indignation? But ill do my circ.u.mstances agree with my feelings. I feel as if I were totally misplaced in some frolic of nature, and wander onwards in gloom and unhappiness, seeking for my proper sphere. But, alas! these efforts of uneasy misery are but the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave."

I again began to experience, as on a former occasion, the o'ermastering power of a mind larger beyond comparison than my own; but I felt it my duty to resist the influence. "Yes, you are misplaced, my friend," I said--"perhaps more decidedly so than any other man I ever knew; but is not this characteristic, in some measure, of the whole species? We are all misplaced; and it seems a part of the scheme of deity, that we should work ourselves up to our proper sphere. In what other respect does man so differ from the inferior animals as in those aspirations which lead him through all the progressions of improvement, from the lowest to the highest level of his nature?"

"That may be philosophy, my friend," he replied, "but a heart ill at ease finds little of comfort in it. You knew my father: need I say he was one of the excellent of the earth--a man who held directly from G.o.d Almighty the patent of his honours? I saw that father sink broken-hearted into the grave, the victim of legalized oppression--yes, saw him overborne in the long contest which his high spirit and his indomitable love of the right had incited him to maintain--overborne by a mean, despicable scoundrel, one of the creeping things of the earth.

Heaven knows I did my utmost to a.s.sist in the struggle. In my fifteenth year, Mr. Lindsay, when a thin, loose-jointed boy, I did the work of a man, and strained my unknit and overtoiled sinews as if life and death depended on the issue, till oft, in the middle of the night, I have had to fling myself from my bed to avoid instant suffocation--an effect of exertion so prolonged and so premature. Nor has the man exerted himself less heartily than the boy--in the roughest, severest labours of the field, I have never yet met a compet.i.tor. But my labours have been all in vain--I have seen the evil bewailed by Solomon--the righteous man falling down before the wicked." I could answer only with a sigh. "You are in the right," he continued, after a pause, and in a more subdued tone: "man is certainly misplaced--the present scene of things is below the dignity of both his moral and intellectual nature. Look round you--(we had reached the summit of a gra.s.sy eminence which rose over the wood, and commanded a pretty extensive view of the surrounding country)--see yonder scattered cottages, that, in the faint light, rise dim and black amid the stubble fields--my heart warms as I look on them, for I know how much of honest worth, and sound, generous feeling shelters under these roof-trees. But why so much of moral excellence united to a mere machinery for ministering to the ease and luxury of a few of, perhaps, the least worthy of our species--creatures so spoiled by prosperity that the claim of a common nature has no force to move them, and who seem as miserably misplaced as the myriads whom they oppress?"

"If I'm designed yon lordling's slave-- By nature's law designed-- Why was an independent wish E'er planted in my mind?

If not, why am I subject to His cruelty and scorn?

Or why has man the will and power To make his fellow mourn?"

"I would hardly know what to say in return, my friend," I rejoined, "did not you, yourself, furnish me with the reply. You are groping on in darkness, and it may be unhappiness, for your proper sphere; but it is in obedience to a great though occult law of our nature--a law, general as it affects the species, in its course of onward progression--particular, and infinitely more irresistible, as it operates on every truly superior intellect. There are men born to wield the destinies of nations--nay, more, to stamp the impression of their thoughts and feelings on the mind of the whole civilized world. And by what means do we often find them roused to accomplish their appointed work? At times hounded on by sorrow and suffering, and thus in the design of providence, that there may be less of sorrow and suffering in the world ever after--at times roused by cruel and maddening oppression, that the oppressor may perish in his guilt, and a whole country enjoy the blessings of freedom. If Wallace had not suffered from tyranny, Scotland would not have been free."

"But how apply the remark?" said my companion.

"Robert Burns," I replied, again grasping his hand, "yours, I am convinced, is no vulgar destiny. Your griefs, your sufferings, your errors even, the oppressions you have seen and felt, the thoughts which have arisen in your mind, the feelings and sentiments of which it has been the subject, are, I am convinced, of infinitely more importance in their relation to your country than to yourself. You are, wisely and benevolently, placed far below your level, that thousands and ten thousands of your countrymen may be the better enabled to attain to theirs. a.s.sert the dignity of manhood and of genius, and there will be less of wrong and oppression in the world ever after."

I spent the remainder of the evening in the farm-house of Mossgiel, and took the coach next morning for Liverpool.

CHAPTER VII.

"His is that language of the heart In which the answering heart would speak-- Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start, Or the smile light up the cheek; And his that music to whose tone The common pulse of man keeps time, In cot or castle's mirth or moan, In cold or sunny clime."--_American poet._

The love of literature, when once thoroughly awakened in a reflective mind, can never after cease to influence it. It first a.s.similates our intellectual part to those fine intellects which live in the world of books, and then renders our connection with them indispensable, by laying hold of that social principle of our nature which ever leads us to the society of our fellows as our proper sphere of enjoyment. My early habits, by heightening my tone of thought and feeling, had tended considerably to narrow my circle of companionship. My profession, too, had led me to be much alone; and now that I had been several years the master of an Indiaman, I was quite as fond of reading, and felt as deep an interest in whatever took place in the literary world, as when a student at St. Andrew's. There was much in the literature of the period to gratify my pride as a Scotchman. The despotism, both political and religious, which had overlaid the energies of our country for more than a century, had long been removed, and the national mind had swelled and expanded under a better system of things, till its influence had become co-extensive with civilized man. Hume had produced his inimitable history, and Adam Smith his wonderful work, which was to revolutionise and new-model the economy of all the governments of the earth. And there, in my little library, were the histories of Henry and Robertson, the philosophy of Kaimes and Reid, the novels of Smollett and Mackenzie, and the poetry of Beattie and Home. But, if there was no lack of Scottish intellect in the literature of the time, there was a decided lack of Scottish manners; and I knew too much of my humble countrymen not to regret it. True, I had before me the writings of Ramsay and my unfortunate friend Ferguson; but there was a radical meanness in the first that lowered the tone of his colouring far beneath the freshness of truth, and the second, whom I had seen perish--too soon, alas! for literature and his country--had given us but a few specimens of his power when his hand was arrested for ever.

My vessel, after a profitable, though somewhat tedious voyage, had again arrived in Liverpool. It was late in December, 1786, and I was pa.s.sing the long evening in my cabin, engaged with a whole sheaf of pamphlets and magazines which had been sent me from the sh.o.r.e. _The Lounger_ was, at this time, in course of publication. I had ever been an admirer of the quiet elegance and exquisite tenderness of Mackenzie; and, though I might not be quite disposed to think, with Johnson, that "the chief glory of every people arises from its authors," I certainly felt all the prouder of my country, from the circ.u.mstance that so accomplished a writer was one of my countrymen. I had read this evening some of the more recent numbers, half disposed to regret, however, amid all the pleasure they afforded me, that the Addison of Scotland had not done for the manners of his country what his ill.u.s.trious prototype had done for those of England, when my eye fell on the ninety-seventh number. I read the introductory sentences, and admired their truth and elegance. I had felt, in the contemplation of supereminent genius, the pleasure which the writer describes, and my thoughts reverted to my two friends--the dead and the living. "In the view of highly superior talents, as in that of great and stupendous objects," says the essayist, "there is a sublimity which fills the soul with wonder and delight--which expands it, as it were, beyond its usual bounds, and which, investing our nature with extraordinary powers and extraordinary honours, interests our curiosity and flatters our pride."