Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844

As if there lay beneath the wave,
Secure from trouble, toil, and care,
A world than earthly world more fair.”

Years have rolled on, but they have taken nothing, they have added much to the fame of those illustrious men.

“Time but the impression deeper makes,
As streams their channels deeper wear.”

The voice of ages has spoken: it has given Campbell and Byron the highest place with Burns in lyric poetry, and destined Scott

“To rival all but Shakspeare’s name below.”

Their names now shine in unapproachable splendour, far removed, like the fixed stars, from the clouds and the rivalry of a lower world. To the end of time they will maintain their exalted station. Never will the cultivated traveller traverse the sea of Archipelago, that the “Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece,” will not recur to his recollection; never will he approach the shores of Loch Katrine, that the image of Ellen Douglas will not be present to his memory; never will he gaze on the cliffs of Britain,   that he will not thrill at the exploits of the “Mariners of England, who guard our native seas.” Whence has arisen this great, this universally acknowledged celebrity? My lord, it is hard to say whether we have most to admire the brilliancy of their fancy or the creations of their genius, the beauty of their verses or the magic of their language, the elevation of their thoughts or the pathos of their conceptions. But there is one whose recent death we all deplore, but who has lighted “the torch of Hope at nature’s funeral pile,” who has gained a yet higher inspiration. In Campbell it is the moral purposes to which he has directed his mighty powers which is the real secret of his success, the lofty objects to which he has devoted his life, which have proved his passport to immortality. It is because he has unceasingly contended for the best interests of humanity, because he has ever asserted the dignity of the human soul, because he has never forgotten that amidst all the distinctions of time,

“The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.”

Because he has regarded himself as the high-priest of Nature, and the world which we inhabit as the abode not merely of human care and human joys, but as the temple of the living God, in which praise is due, and where service is to be performed.—“The memory of Scott, Byron, and Campbell.”

William E. Aytoun, Esq., advocate, said—We are met here to-day not only to pay due honour to the memory of that bard whose genius has consecrated this spot, and the scenes around it, as classic ground for ever, but for a wider, a more important, and even a more generous purpose. I look upon this assemblage as a great national gathering—a meeting not only of the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, but of kindly strangers also, to testify our reverence and affection for the living lights of fame that are still burning amongst us, and our undying gratitude and exultation for those who have already passed away. Thus, though they belong to the sister countries, we have paid due homage to the venerable name of Wordsworth and to the sparkling genius of Moore. Thus the heart of every one that hears me burned within him—am I not right?—when we saw our own noble Wilson rise amidst us, and heard him, with an eloquence the most pure—for it flowed spontaneously from his soul—speak, as perhaps no other man could speak, of the genius of the immortal dead. Thus, too, we have heard the tribute so touchingly paid to Campbell, who now sleeps among the sages, and the statesmen, and the warriors, and the poets of famous England; and to him who has a happier and a holier sepulture still—for he lies within the bosom of his own dear native land—to Scott, the master-spirit of the age, for whom we well may mourn, since we dare not hope to look upon his like again! I have now, in a few words, to entreat your patience whilst I speak of two other Scottish poets whose memory is yet green amongst us—both reared, like Robert Burns, at the lowly hearth of the peasant—both pursuing, like him, through every discouragement and difficulty, the pathway towards honourable renown—and both the authors of strains which bear the stamp of immortality. And first, let me allude to one of them whom I knew and dearly loved. Who is there that has not heard of the Ettrick Shepherd—of him whose inspiration descended as lightly as the breeze that blows along the mountain side—who saw, amongst the lonely and sequestered glens of the south, from eyelids touched with fairy ointment, such visions as are vouchsafed to the minstrel alone—the dream of sweet Kilmeny, too spiritual for the taint of earth? I shall not attempt any comparison—for I am not here to criticise—between his genius and that of other men, on whom God in his bounty has bestowed the great and the marvellous gift. The songs and the poetry of the Shepherd are now the nation’s own, as indeed they long have been; and amidst the minstrelsy of the choir who have made the name of Scotland and her peasantry familiar throughout the wide reach of the habitable world the clear wild notes of the Forest will for ever be heard to ring. I have seen him many times by the banks of his own   romantic Yarrow; I have sat with him in the calm and sunny weather by the margin of Saint Mary’s Lake; I have seen his eyes sparkle and his cheek flush as he spoke out some old heroic ballad of the days of the Douglas and the Græme, and I have felt, as I listened to the accents of his manly voice, that whilst Scotland could produce amongst her children such men as him beside me, her ancient spirit had not departed from her, nor the star of her glory grown pale! For he was a man, indeed, cast in nature’s happiest mould. True-hearted, and brave, and generous, and sincere; alive to every kindly impulse, and fresh at the core to the last, he lived among his native hills the blameless life of the shepherd and the poet; and on the day when he was laid beneath the sod in the lonely kirkyard of Ettrick, there was not one dry eye amongst the hundreds that lingered round his grave. Of the other sweet singer, too—of Allan Cunningham, the leal-hearted and kindly Allan—I might say much; but why should I detain you further? Does not his name alone recall to your recollection many a sweet song that has thrilled the bosom of the village maiden with an emotion that a princess need not blush to own? Honour, then, to the poets!—whether they speak out loud and trumpet-tongued, to find audience in the hearts of the great, and the mighty, and the brave—or whether, in lowlier and more simple accents, but not less sacred in their mission, they bring comfort and consolation to the poor. As the sweep of the rainbow, which has its arch in heaven, and its shafts resting upon the surface of the earth—as the sunshine which falls with equal bounty upon the palace and the hut—is the all-pervading and universal spirit of poetry; and what less can we do to those men who have collected and scattered it around us, than to hail them as the benefactors of their race? That has been the purpose of our gathering, and we have held it in a fitting spot. Proud, indeed, may be the district that can claim within herself the birthplaces of Burns and of Cunningham; and proud may we all be—and we are proud, from yourself, my lord, to the humblest individual who bore a part in the proceedings of this memorable day—that we have the opportunity of testifying our respect to the genius that will defy the encroachment of time: and which has shed, and will continue to shed, a splendour and a glory around the land that we love so well! My lord, I am honoured in having to propose “The memory of the Ettrick Shepherd, and of Allan Cunningham.”

Sir D. H. Blair, Bart., of Blairquhan, said—My Lord Eglinton and gentlemen, I have been requested to give the next toast, which I very much wish had fallen into abler hands. It is a toast, my lord, that is as well calculated to call forth enthusiastic bursts of eloquence as any we have listened to with such delight to-day; but as on that account I feel quite unable to do it adequate justice, I must trust to that acclamation by which I am confident it will be received, without any effort on my part. We all recollect the words of our immortal bard, when, in alluding to the manner in which nature had finished this fair creation, he says—

“Her ’prentice han’ she tried on man,
And then she made the lasses O!”

I am sure every man in this assembly will join me in an enthusiastic bumper to the health of the “Countess of Eglinton, and the ladies who have honoured this meeting with their presence.”

Colonel Mure of Caldwell, said—In obedience to the order of our noble chairman, I have to request a bumper to the Peasantry of Scotland. In order justly to appreciate the claims of this most estimable class of our fellow-citizens upon our sympathies, I must remind you that to it pre-eminently belongs the honour of having given birth to the remarkable man whose memory we are this day met to celebrate. I must remind you, that while the fact of Burns having raised himself from the rank of a Scottish ploughman, by the innate force of heaven-born genius, to the level of the greatest and most original poets of any age or country, is the noblest feature of his history, the peasantry of Scotland, in their turn, may be entitled to feel pride, even in the presence of the proudest nobles of their land, when they remember   that from them, and not from the privileged orders of society, our greatest national genius was destined to arise. And, in fact, the most striking, and perhaps the most valuable feature in the poetical character of Burns, is the marked ascendancy which the spirit and habits of the peasant, the genius of the man, as it were, continued to exercise on the genius of the poet, even during the most brilliant periods of his subsequent career. Even amid that rich variety of subjects, in the treatment of which his instinctive refinement and delicacy of taste enabled him to combine, with all the higher powers of the man, the courtly graces of the gentleman and scholar—still his happiest effort, the masterpiece of his genius, in which his own mind is displayed in the most agreeable light, and his inspiration breathes forth with the greatest brilliancy and beauty, will be found to be dictated by the associations of his early rustic days. When I reflect, therefore, how copious, how graphic, how true are his own descriptions of the character of the Scottish peasantry, in all its varieties of grave or of gay, of light or of shadow, I cannot but feel it is a sort of presumption to offer in a company, who must be all so familiar with these descriptions, any crude remark of my own, on the more interesting features of those to which they refer. I shall, however, do my best to season the few comments which I am in some degree bound to offer on the subject allotted to me, by taking the poet’s works as my text-book. Were I called upon, therefore, to name the virtues of our peasantry, which chiefly claim our respect and admiration, I should point first to their industry, frugality, and contentment, as those which prominently adorn their own class of society above all others, and also to their piety and their patriotism, as shared, I would fain hope equally, or at least largely, by the mass of our fellow-citizens. Where, then, shall we find a more spirited picture of the influence and effects of the three former qualities—above all, of that most inestimable blessing, contentment—than in the brilliant little poem which bears the humble title of the “Twa Dogs,” where, after so graphically describing the honest toils, often the severe hardships, inseparable from the peasant’s lot, he goes on to say, that yet

“They’re nae sae wretched’s ane wad think,
Though constantly on poortith’s brink;
They’re sae accustom’d wi’ the sight,
The view of it gi’es little fright;
And how it comes I never kent yet,
They’re maistly wonderfu’ contented;
And buirdly chiels and clever hizzies
Are bred in such a way as this is.”

But where are we, after all, to look for the source of this beautiful attribute of contentment? Is it not in the still more admirable one of their piety? It is here almost superfluous to make any close appeal to our poet’s authority—to that most sublime description, so familiar to you all, where the old peasant on the Saturday night collects his scattered family, at the close of the long week’s labour, around his humble but happy cottage fireside, and, after a few sweet but hard-earned hours of social enjoyment, instils, before retiring to repose, from the open Word of God, into their minds those lessons of Divine wisdom which were to guide them during the next week, and through life, in the paths of religion and virtue. Are not such scenes to this day common in our cottages, still, as of old, I firmly believe, the favourite abodes of the genuine spirit of simple Scottish piety? Then as to the last, if not the least, in the above list of the virtues of our peasants—their patriotism. To whom, I would ask, but to the peasantry of Scotland, does our poet so beautifully appeal as having bled with Wallace? To whom, but to our peasantry, did our national hero look—and never look in vain—for support in his gallant effort to restore the fallen fortunes of his country, at the period when our doughty knights and nobles—happily but for a season—had been reduced, by the intrigues or intimidation of our powerful enemy, to crouch submissive beneath the throne of his usurpation. And can we doubt that this proud spirit of patriotism still burns as warm in their hearts as then, if no longer, by God’s blessing, so fearfully or so desperately called into action; or that when after, as our poet again has it,

“They lay aside their private cares
To mind the Kirk and State affairs

They’ll talk of patronage and priests
Wi’ kindling fury in their breasts,
Or tell what new taxation’s coming,
And ferlie at the folks in Lunnan.”

But I have already detained you too long—if not longer than the interest of the subject, at least than my power of doing justice to it entitles me. I shall therefore conclude by pronouncing a grace over our bumper, also supplied from the stores of the Poet, and the sentiments of which every one here present, I am sure, will cordially sympathize—

“O Scotia! my dear, my native soil,
For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent,
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content.”

Sir James Campbell of Glasgow said—In proposing the toast with which I have been entrusted, I shall content myself by simply expressing my deep regret that, under any circumstances, I could so inadequately express my own sentiments and feelings of admiration—in all the acceptations of that word—of “the Land of Burns.” I am aware, however, that I have the honour of addressing an assemblage who can appreciate, who do appreciate, and who, by their appearance here, and the interest so many of them have taken in the proceedings and associations of this day, give ample proof of their high estimation of, and attachment to, “the Land of Burns.” I am aware, also, that I have the honour to address not a few of those who have, with the pencil or with the pen, done homage to the classical, patriotic, and poetical claims of that land. I feel satisfied, indeed, that there is not an individual in this most interesting and splendid assemblage, who does not greatly prize and admire the fertile soil and landscape beauty of that land; whose bosom glows not with an honest pride at the intelligence, enterprise, and patriotism of the men of that land; and, above all, who does not honour and admire the beauty and accomplishments of the ladies of that land. And therefore is it, my lord, that, without further preface, I would call upon this assembly to dedicate a bumper to “The Land of Burns.”

Lord Eglinton said—Ladies and Gentlemen, Except the toast which I have had the honour and happiness of bringing before you to-day, there is not one which gives me greater pleasure to see committed to my charge than that which I am now about to bring before your notice—I mean the “Provost and Magistrates of Ayr;” and along with it, though not down on the card, my feelings will not allow me to leave out the Interests of Ayr. On such an occasion as this, and so late in the day, I will not occupy your time by dilating on the interest which I feel in that Town, or of the knowledge which I have of the Provost and the Magistrates. From that knowledge I feel convinced that the interests of Ayr could not be placed in more worthy hands. In addition to the respect felt towards them as the Magistrates of the County Town, we all feel gratitude to them for the assistance, support, and countenance, they have given to our proceedings on this occasion.

Provost Miller said—Permit me to return my best thanks, on behalf of my colleagues and myself, for the flattering compliment which has just been paid to them. The manner in which the toast was introduced by the noble lord was particularly gratifying to me; and I am sure it will be appreciated by the entire corporation. I beg to assure the noble lord that the recognition of “Auld Ayr” at a meeting so peculiarly interesting as the present, and combining, as it does, so much of the rank, talent, and worth of the land, will be highly appreciated by the “honest men and bonnie lasses” for which it has been characterized by the immortal bard in honour of whose memory we are this day met.

The Lord Justice-General rose amidst much applause. He said—Ladies and gentlemen, after the uncommon success which has attended every part of the proceedings at this meeting to-day, I am confident that I anticipate the unanimous concurrence of this great assembly I have now the honour to address, when I state that there appears, in addition to many toasts drunk with so much enthusiasm, one that remains as a debt   of gratitude due by this assembly. I consider it a most fortunate circumstance attending this meeting, that we have been presided over by the Noble Lord in the chair. I am sure that the most enthusiastic admirers of Burns must be gratified in thinking that the proceedings of this day have been conducted by my noble friend in so admirable a manner. Every person must be satisfied that it was impossible the proceedings of this day could have been commenced in a happier strain. Without further comment, I beg leave to propose that we drink the health of our excellent Chairman.

Lord Eglinton, in reply, said—My Lord Justice, and ladies and gentlemen, I assure you I feel most deeply grateful to you for the honour you have paid me, as I always ought to be when my health is proposed and drunk at a meeting of Scotchmen. But I assure you I never felt more deeply grateful, or more highly sensible of that honour, than I do at the present moment, when my health is proposed by such a man as the Lord Justice-General, and when it has been received—and, I am proud to say, enthusiastically received—by an assemblage met for such a purpose as to do honour to the memory of our greatest poet. But, gentlemen, I will not at this late hour of the day, and in a temple, as it were, dedicated to the Muses—I will not occupy your time by returning thanks for drinking the health of one who has no merit. But, before we part, there is a toast which claims our especial consideration—“the health of Professor Wilson.” Had it not been for the modesty of the Professor, it ought to have been proposed at a much earlier part of the evening. On such an occasion as this, when we have met from all parts of Scotland, to do honour to the memory of the greatest genius Scotland ever knew, it surely is not only proper, but our bounden duty, to drink the health of the greatest genius which Scotland possesses now. The memories of others have been drunk to-night, and have been received with that deep feeling which Scotchmen feel towards the memory of genius, but the toast which I am now proposing is one which has this additional merit, that the subject of it is alive and hearty, and able to continue, as you have heard to-day, in that career which has hitherto so much delighted his countrymen. In the presence of Professor Wilson I cannot dilate, as I could wish to do, on the character of that gentleman. I will only ask you to drink with me his health in a way that will show that you can pay honour to genius alive, as you can do honour to departed worth.

Professor Wilson rose and simply bowed his acknowledgments.

The Earl of Eglinton then rose and said—Ladies and Gentlemen,

“Nae man can tether time nor tide;
The hour approaches—Tam maun ride.”

This brought the proceedings to a close.

We have thought it due—not less to the character of the meeting than to the sincere and fervid eloquence of the speakers—to place upon our pages an authentic record of the whole proceedings of the day. This “great national gathering,” as it was aptly denominated, must be of enduring and not ephemeral interest, and will be remembered, and spoken of, and quoted, long after events of greater apparent importance have passed away into oblivion. The outpourings of a nation’s heart are immortal. The tributes that were paid, in the ages long since gone by, to the poets of Greece and of Italy, have outlived the most enduring monuments of marble, and we dare not hesitate now to recognise a triumph which will be as everlasting as theirs.

We feel that little comment is necessary upon the various addresses that are given above. But we should not be justified—and no man who was there that day would forgive us—if we passed over in silence the manly and distinguished manner in which Lord Eglinton discharged the duties of the chair. Scotland, as we have already had occasion to say, is proud, and justly so, of her aristocracy; but there is not one of them all, through the whole length and breadth of the land, to whom she can point more exultingly than to this young nobleman. His opening address would have done honour to one long trained in the schools of oratory, and that was its   smallest merit. The emphatic and earnest tone of admiration in which he spoke of the peasantry of his country—his generous and touching allusions to Burns in his earlier years, to what he had done and suffered, and to the honours so long withheld, and now so brilliantly conferred—and the patriotic fervour which pervaded his whole address—carried along with him not only the applauses, but the hearts of the whole assemblage. Lord Eglinton may well look back with pride and satisfaction to the proceedings of that day; for he has secured the affections of thousands who already respected his name.

Of the other speeches, eloquent and impressive as they were, we shall—with only one exception—speak collectively; and the highest praise we can give is to say, that they were every way worthy of the occasion, of the subjects which they celebrated, and of the men by whom they were uttered. There was a delicate propriety in the feeling which excluded from the list of toasts the names of the living poets, with the great and glorious exceptions of Wordsworth and Moore, now beyond all cavil at the head of the literature of their respective countries. Their presence, though ardently hoped for, was hardly to be expected on this occasion; for their advanced years, and the distant journey they must have undertaken, were serious obstacles; but their apologetic letters, full of deep feeling and sympathy, were received, and the reception which greeted their names, showed the respect and love which the Scottish people entertain for the greatness and universality of their fame. Deep also and thrilling was the emotion evinced at the mention of the illustrious dead, who have passed away into their graves in the fulness and maturity of their fame. Strange and powerful is the spell which lies in the mere plain utterance of their names! Scott, and Byron, and Campbell, (just laid in the noblest mausoleum of the world,) the Ettrick Shepherd, and Allan Cunningham—what names for a country to record in its annals, in the brief space of one generation!

But the speech to which all looked forward with the utmost expectation and anxiety, was that of Professor Wilson. His zeal in the cause of Burns, his earnest and reiterated defence of his reputation, were so well known, that on this occasion, when the balance might be held as finally struck, and when the nation, by its own voluntary act, had recognized the position which its poet, through all time coming must maintain, it would have been felt as a vast and serious omission if the last elegy had not been uttered by the greatest vindicator of his fame. It was so uttered, and none but those who listened to that address can conceive the effect which it produced. Elsewhere than in these pages we should assuredly have attempted some comment upon it. As it is, we shall borrow an opinion of the provincial press, from the pen, we believe, of the Editor of the Dumfries-shire Herald, Mr Aird, himself a spectator of the scene, and a man of high intellect and imagination, whose remarks we have been led to adopt, not from the eulogy they contain, but from their just and reverential truth:—

“The remarkable speech of the day was Professor Wilson’s. Since the time when in his ‘bright and shining youth’ he walked seventy miles to be present at a Burns’ meeting, and electrified it with a new and peculiar fervour of eloquence, such as had never been heard among us before, how manifold, how multiform have been this man’s generous vindications of our great Bard! Now broad in humour; now sportive and playful; now sarcastic, scornful, and searching; now calmly philosophic in criticism; now thoughtful and solemn, large of reverent discourse, ‘looking before and after,’ with all the sweetest by-plays of humanity, with every reconciling softness of charity—such, in turns, and in quickest intermingled tissue of the ethereal woof, have been the many illustrations which this large-minded, large-hearted Scotchman, in whose character there is neither corner nor cranny, has poured in the very prodigality of his affectionate abundance around and over the name and the fame of Robert Burns. It became him—and he knew it—that on this great and consummating occasion, so full of reconcilement betwixt human frailty and human   worth, his address, on which so much expectation waited, should be a last Solemn Requiem over the grave of the illustrious dead, pronounced not merely to the congregation of the day, but to mankind in general, and to every future age. With those long, heart-drawn, lingering, slow-expiring tones, solemn as a cathedral chant, the whole of this sacred piece of service (for we can call it nothing else) was to us like some mournful oratorio by Mozart, soft at once and sublime. Some might be disappointed that they heard nothing on this occasion of the varied play of Christopher North; but the heart of Scotland, in its calm retirement, will appreciate this holy oration, as worthily hallowing and sanctifying her meeting.”

The proceedings in that Pavilion were a just and fitting conclusion to the splendid jubilee of the day. Some no doubt were absent, whom the public would gladly have seen there; for, on an occasion like this, the general wish must have been, that all the greatness, and talent, and learning of the land should have united in the National Festival. But that absence, though regretted, did not, in any degree, lessen the enthusiasm. Indeed, as we looked around the meeting, and saw, unelevated to any conspicuous place, Delta, and Chambers, and Ferrier, and a hundred other distinguished men, not only content, but proud to bear testimony by their simple presence to the genuine purpose of the assembly, it was hardly possible to wish for more. Every individual feeling was merged in the common desire, that the day should be consecrated to its own peculiar object; and consecrated it was, if unanimity, and eloquence, and tears, and the outpouring of all that is lofty, and generous, and sincere, can consecrate aught on earth—where error and frailty must abide, but where the judgment of man in his weakness, may not, and dare not, usurp the functions of the All-seeing and Eternal Judge.

And now we close the hasty record of a scene that will be remembered so long as Scotland is a nation. Some there may be—for there are malignant and jaundiced spirits every where—who may sneer at the solemnities we have witnessed; and it is well that they should do so, for the praise of such men is no honour—far better that it should be withheld. We conclude by again adopting the language of Mr Aird, which leaves no word unsaid.

“Such has been the tribute of a country to her national poet. She furnished him with the rich materials of his song—with her dear victories set in blood; with the imperishable memory of her independence; with the character of her sons and daughters, simple as water, but strong as the waterfall; with her snatches of old-world minstrelsy, surely never composed by mortal man, but spilt from the overflowing soul of sorrow and gladness; with her music, twin-born, say rather one with her minstrelsy; with her fairy belief, the most delicately beautiful mythology in the history of the human mind, and strangely contrasted with the rugged character of her people, a people of sturt and strife; with her heroic faith; with the graves of her headless martyrs, in green shaw or on grim moor, visited by many a slip of sunshine streaming down from behind the cloud in the still autumnal afternoon. These, and all the other priceless elements of ‘the auld Scottish glory,’ he—the national bard—compacted and crystallized into a Poetry which, by innumerable points of sympathetic contact, carries back into the national heart, by ever-conducting issue, the thoughts and feelings which itself first gave forth to his plastic genius; and thus there is an eternal interchange of cause and effect, to the perpetuation and propagation of patriotism, and all that constitutes national spirit and character.

“THEREFORE it was fitting that such a national tribute should be paid to such a national benefactor.”

STANZAS FOR THE BURNS’ FESTIVAL

BY DELTA

I