CHAPTER XXI. BURNS. Every quarter of a century a revolution takes place in literary taste, the old idols of its worship are displaced for newer effigies, but the ancient altars are only overthrown to be re-established at some future time, and to receive the homage which they forfeited, on account of the fickleness of their votaries, and not in consequence of any demerits of their own. It is not in the nature of Burns' productions that his fame should altogether set aside the remembrance of his follies; yet so ably and so philosophically has his biographer discharged his duty to the public and to the individual, whose genius he helped to immortalise, and so truly, in the spirit of a philosophical historian, has he traced the infirmities of Burns to their real origin, that were it only for the noble effort to vindicate the character of genius, Currie's Life of Burns would still deserve to be considered one of the best specimens of biography in the English language. And so long as its excellence had the freshness of a new performance to recommend it to the public, and to lay hold of its attention, the character of Burns was treated with indulgence, and his poetry was duly and justly appreciated. But of late years there has been a tendency, in literary opinion, to underrate the merits of the Scottish bard, and even to exaggerate the failings of the man. The vulgarity of his errors and his unfortunate predilection for pipes and punch-bowls, it is incumbent on every sober critic to reprobate. Byron, who in his aristocratic mood, had no notion of a poor man "holding the patent of his honours direct from God Almighty," could not tolerate the addiction of a bard to such ungentlemanly habits, and Burns was, therefore, in the eyes of the proud lord, a 66 strange compound of dirt and deity;" but his lordship, at the time of the observation, was in one of his fits of outrageous abstinence, and to use his own language, “had no more charity than a vinegar cruet." Bulwer has also lately joined in depreciating the poor exciseman. It is the more to be regretted, as he has the credit of possessing more generosity of literary feelings, and less of the jealousy of genius, than most of his compeers. Burns' fame has certainly declined in the fashionable world; but if it be any consolation to his spirit, his poetry continues as popular as ever with the poor. Its exquisite pathos has lost nothing of its original charm, but no volume is less the book of the boudoir-the fastidious imagination can hardly associate the idea of poetry with that of an atmosphere that is redolent of tobacco smoke and spirituous liquors. The frailties of Burns are unfortunately too glaring to admit of palliation; but manifest as they are, much misapprehension we are persuaded prevails as to their character; a dog with a bad name is not in greater peril of a halter, than a poor man's errors are in danger of exciting unmitigated disgust. In fashionable morality it is one thing to drink the "inordinate cup that is unblessed" of claret or champagne, but quite another to "put an enemy in the mouth to steal away the senses" in the shape of whisky; similar effects may arise from both, but the odium is not a little in the quality, and not the quantity, of the potation. In the parlance of convivial gentlemen, to have a bout at the Clarendon is to exceed in the pleasures of the table; but to commit the same excess in a country ale-house, is to be in a state of disgusting intoxication. There is no question, however, but that wine is a "more gentlemanly tipple" than any kind of ardent spirits, and that its in. toxicating effect is an "amabilis insania" of a milder character than the "rabia furibunda" which belongs to the latter. The excesses of the wine-bibber, moreover, are generally few and far between, while those of the dram-drinker are frequent, and infinitely more injurious to mind and body. In this country the poor man is debarred the use of wine; spirits are unfortunately the cheaper stimulant; but were it a matter of choice, he might prefer the former, as well as the French and Italian peasant. There is one circumstance, however, which deserves consideration in forming any comparative estimate of intemperate habits. Different constitutions are differently effected by the same excitants. Johnson could boast of drinking his three bottles of port wine with impunity; but the doctor's was an "omni vorantia gula." Dr. Parr could master two without any inconvenience, but probably had Burns dined with either of them, he would have found the half of a Scotch pint might have caused him in the morning" to have remembered a mass of things, but nouhgt distinctly," and to conclude he had been drinking the vinum erroris ab ebriis doctoribus propinatum," as St. Austin denominates another inebriating agent. The sin of intemperance is certainly the same whether it be caus ed by one bottle or three, or whether the alcohol be concentrated in one form, or more largely diluted in another. In Burns' time intemperance was much more common in his walk of life than it now is. In Pope's day we find not a few of his most celebrated contemporaries and immediate predecessors addicted to drunkenness. "Cowley's death (Pope says) was occasioned by a mean accident while his great friend Dean Pratt was on a visit with him at Chertsey. They had been together to see a neighbour of Cowley's, who (according to the fashion of the times) made them too welcome. They did not set out on their walk home till it was too late, and had drank so deep, that they lay out in the fields all night. This gave Cowley the fever that carried him off." Dryden, like Burns, was remarkable for sobriety in early life, "but for the last ten years of his life, (says Dennis,) he was much acquainted with Addison, and drank with him even more than he ever used to do, probably so far as to hasten his end." Yet in his case, as Byron's, wine seems to have had no exhilarating influence. Speaking of his melancholy, he says, "Nor wine nor love could make me gay." And Byron speaks of wine making him "savage instead of mirthful." Parnell, also, (on Pope's authority,) "was a great follower of drams, and strangely open and scandalous in his debaucheries, (his excesses, however, only commenced after the death of his wife, whom he tenderly loved,) and "those helps," he adds, that sorrow first called in for assistance, habit soon rendered necessary, and he died in his thirty-sixth year, in some measure a martyr to conjugal fidelity, somewhat we presume in the way "Of Lord Mount-Coffee-house, the British peer, But another account describes Parnell's taking to drunkenness on account of his prospect declining as a preacher at the queen's death, "and so he became a sot, and finished his existence." Churchill was found drunk on a dunghill. Prior, according to Spencer, " used to bury himself for whole days and nights together with a poor mean creature, his celebrated Chloe," who, unlike Ronsard's Cassandra, was the bar-maid of the house he frequented. And even Pope, we are told by Dr. King, hastened his end by drinking spirits. Precedents, however, are no plea for crime, and to multiply them would be useless for any other purpose than to deprecate the infliction of an excessive penalty in a single instance, because the latest though not perhaps the most enormous. If Burns' irregularity deserved the name of habitual intemperance, it was only during the latter years of his life. Till his three-and-twentieth year, he was remarkable for his sobriety, no less than for the modesty of his behaviour. Had he continued at the plough, in all probability he would have remained a stranger to the vices that his new career unfortunately led him into. It was only, (he tells us,) when he became an author, that he got accustomed to excess, and when his friends made him an exciseman, that his casual indulgence in convivial pleasures acquired the dominion of a settled habit. In early life he laboured under a.disorder of the stomach, accompanied by palpitations of the heart, depression of the spirits, and nervous pains in the head, the nature of which he never appears to have understood, but which evidently arose from dyspepsia. These sufferings, be it remembered, are complained of in his latter years |