ROBERT BURNS

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

NOTE. This address was given in Boston in 1859, on the occasion of the Burns centenary.

At the first announcement, from I know not whence, that the 25th of January was the hundredth anniversary 5 of the birth of Robert Burns, a sudden consent warmed the great English race, in all its kingdoms, colonies, and states, all over the world, to keep the festival.

We are here to hold our parliament with love and poesy, as men were wont to do in the Middle Ages. Those famous 10 parliaments might or might not have had more stateliness and better singers than we, though that is yet to be known, but they could not have had better reason.

I can only explain this singular unanimity in a race which rarely acts together, but rather after their watch15 word, "Each for himself," by the fact that Robert Burns, the poet of the middle class, represents in the minds of men to-day that great uprising of the middle class against the armed and privileged minorities, that uprising which worked politically in the American and French revolu20 tions, and which, not in governments so much as in education and social order, has changed the face of the world.

In order for this destiny, his birth, breeding, and fortunes were low. His organic sentiment was absolute

independence, and resting as it should on a life of labor. No man existed who could look down on him. They that looked into his eyes saw that they might look down the sky as easily. His muse and teaching was common sense, joyful, aggressive, irresistible. . . .

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The Declaration of Independence, the French Rights of Man, and "The Marseillaise" are not more weighty documents in the history of freedom than the songs of Burns. His satire has lost none of its edge. His musical arrows yet sing through the air. He is so substantially a reformer 10 that I find his grand, plain sense in close chain with the greatest masters, - Rabelais, Shakespeare in comedy, Cervantes, Butler, and Burns. If I should add another name, I find it only in a living countryman of Burns.

He is an exceptional genius. The people who care 15 nothing for literature and poetry care for Burns. It was indifferent they thought who saw him—whether he wrote verse or not: he could have done anything else as well. Yet how true a poet is he! And the poet, too, of poor men, of gray hodden and the guernsey coat and the 20 blouse.

He has given voice to all the experiences of common life; he has endeared the farmhouse and cottage, patches and poverty, beans and barley; hardship; the fear of debt; the dear society of weans and wife, of brothers and 25 sisters, proud of each other, knowing so few, and finding amends for want and obscurity in books and thoughts.

What a love of nature, and, shall I say it? of middleclass nature! Not like Goethe, in the stars, or like Byron, in the ocean, or Moore, in the luxurious East, but in the homely landscape which the poor see around them, 5 bleak leagues of pasture and stubble, ice and sleet and rain and snow-choked brooks; birds, hares, field mice, thistles and heather, which he daily knew. How many Bonny Doons" and "John Anderson my Jo's" and "Auld Lang Synes" all around the earth have his verses 10 been applied to! The farmwork, the country holiday, the fishing cobble, are still his debtors to-day.

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And as he was thus the poet of poor, anxious, cheerful, working humanity, so had he the language of low life. He grew up in a rural district, speaking a patois unintel15 ligible to all but natives, and he has made the Lowland Scotch a Doric dialect of fame. It is the only example in history of a language made classic by the genius of a single man. But more than this. He had that secret of genius to draw from the bottom of society the strength of 20 its speech, and astonish the ears of the polite with these artless words, better than art, and filtered of all offense through his beauty.

The memory of Burns, I am afraid heaven and earth have taken too good care of it to leave us anything to say. 25 The west winds are murmuring it. Open the windows behind you, and hearken for the incoming tide, what the

waves say of it. The doves perching always on the eaves of the Stone Chapel opposite may know something about it.

Every name in broad Scotland keeps his fame bright. The memory of Burns, -every man's, every boy's and girl's head carries snatches of his songs, and they say 5 them by heart, and, what is strangest of all, never learned them from a book, but from mouth to mouth.

The wind whispers them, the birds whistle them, the corn, barley, and bulrushes hoarsely rustle them, nay, the music boxes at Geneva are framed and toothed to play 10 them; the hand organs of the Savoyards in all cities repeat them; and the chimes of bells ring them in the spires. They are the property and the solace of mankind.

Abridged.

Rights of Man: a declaration, similar to the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the French National Assembly in 1789. The Marseillaise the national song of the French. — Rabelais (rä-blà ́): a French philosopher (1495-1553). — Cervan ́tes: a Spanish novelist, the author of "Don Quixote." Butler: an English poet, the author of "Hudibras." a living countryman: Thomas Carlyle. -gray hodden: the coarse gray cloth formerly worn by the Scotch peasantry. the guernsey coat: a garment like the modern sweater, worn by sailors and fishermen.. blouse (blowz): in France a blue linen blouse is worn by all workingmen. weans young children. Goethe (gö'teh): a great German author (1749-1832). — Byron and Moore: British poets. - fishing cobble: fishing boat. - patois (pa-twä'): a country dialect. - Doric dialect: the speech of ancient Greece, now classic. In its rough, hard sounds it was like the Scotch. Stone Chapel: King's Chapel, on Tremont Street, Boston, Mass.- Savoyards: inhabitants of Savoy, in southeastern France.