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Letters to Dead Authors-Part14_ANDREW LANG(1844-1912)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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the hundredth since the press of Kilmarnock brought to light its

solitary masterpiece, your Poems; and next year, therefore,



methinks, the revenue will receive a welcomeaccession from the

abundance of whisky drunk in your honour. It is a cruel thing for



any of your countrymen to feel that, where all the rest love, he can

only admire; where all the rest are idolators, he may not bend the



knee; but stands apart and beats upon his breast, observing, not

adoring--a critic. Yet to some of us--petty souls, perhaps, and



envious--that loud indiscriminating praise of "Robbie Burns" (for so

they style you in their Change-house familiarity) has long been



ungrateful; and, among the treasures of your songs, we venture to

select and even to reject. So it must be! We cannot all love



Haggis, nor "painch, tripe, and thairm," and all those rural

dainties which you celebrate as "warm-reekin, rich!" "Rather too



rich," as the Young Lady said on an occasion recorded by Sam Weller.

Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware



That jaups in luggies;

But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer,



Gie her a Haggis!

You HAVE given her a Haggis, with a vengeance, and her "gratefu'



prayer" is yours for ever. But if even an eternity of partridge may

pall on the epicure, so of Haggis too, as of all earthly delights,



cometh satiety at last. And yet what a glorious Haggis it is--the

more emphaticallyrustic and even Fescennine part of your verse! We



have had many a rural bard since Theocritus "watched the visionary

flocks," but you are the only one of them all who has spoken the



sincere Doric. Yours is the talk of the byre and the plough-tail;

yours is that large utterance of the early hinds. Even Theocritus



minces matters, save where Lacon and Comatas quite out-do the swains

of Ayrshire. "But thee, Theocritus, wha matches?" you ask, and



yourself out-match him in this wide rude region, trodden only by the

rural Muse. "THY rural loves are nature's sel';" and the wooer of



Jean Armour speaks more like a true shepherd than the elegant

Daphnis of the "Oaristys."



Indeed it is with this that moral critics of your life reproach you,

forgetting, perhaps, that in your amours you were but as other



Scotch ploughmen and shepherds of the past and present. Ettrick may

still, with Afghanistan, offer matter for idylls, as Mr. Carlyle



(your antithesis, and the complement of the Scotch character)

supposed; but the morals of Ettrick are those of rural Sicily in old



days, or of Mossgiel in your days. Over these matters the Kirk,

with all her power, and the Free Kirk too, have had absolutely no



influence whatever. To leave so delicate a topic, you were but as

other swains, or, as "that Birkie ca'd a lord," Lord Byron; only you



combined (in certain of your letters) a libertine theory with your

practice; you poured out in song your audacious raptures, your half-



hearted repentance, your shame and your scorn. You spoke the truth

about rural lives and loves. We may like it or dislike it but we



cannot deny the verity.

Was it not as unhappy a thing, Sir, for you, as it was fortunate for



Letters and for Scotland, that you were born at the meeting of two

ages and of two worlds--precisely in the moment when bookish



literature was beginning to reach the people, and when Society was

first learning to admit the low-born to her Minor Mysteries? Before



you how many singers not less truly poets than yourself--though less

versatile not less passionate, though less sensuous not less simple-



-had been born and had died in poor men's cottages! There abides

not even the shadow of a name of the old Scotch song-smiths, of the



old ballad-makers. The authors of "Clerk Saunders," of "The Wife of

Usher's Well," of "Fair Annie," and "Sir Patrick Spens," and "The



Bonny Hind," are as unknown to us as Homer, whom in their directness

and force they resemble. They never, perhaps, gave their poems to



writing; certainly they never gave them to the press. On the lips




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