A Character Study of Byron and Burns

BY ELIZABETH BAILEY TRAYLOR

THESE names are live wires in the lands of the Scotch heather and the English rose, and equally so here by the red hearts of the watermelons and the snow showers of the cotton-fields of the Southern States. One often hears it said of those devoted brotherhoods—the Burns Clubs and the Scotch Societies—“Their Bible is Robbie Burns.” Frank Stanton has a large hearing when he sings:

To a large coterie of kindred spirits the name of Byron evokes a pageant of ideas pulsating with life’s strongest emotions. It is told of a pleasure club that they recently abandoned the books of the day and read the poet exhaustively and with great enthusiasm—no slight tribute to his genius in a time of unremitting demand for that which is palpitant with the breath of today’s life. A learned minister from his pulpit says: “‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’ is a marvel of diction and technique, and no divine has approached the narrative in its exact correspondence to Holy Writ.”

A bare sketch of these two philosophers may suggest to book-lovers in general the particular period of the culture-epochs dominating each career, and discover some of the forces of heredity and environment which produced these characters, vibrant with full, fresh, free life, or reveal to readers equipped by psychical research for judgment how it was that these natures furnished the battleground for so fierce a conflict of good and evil forces.

According to Carlyle, the father of Burns was a “man of thoughtful, intense character, possessing some knowledge and open-minded for more, of keen insight and devout heart, friendly and fearless; a fully unfolded man seldom found in any rank of society.” Of his ancestry we know nothing. The father of Byron was an Englishman, from a line of illustrious ancestors reaching back to the days of William the Conqueror.

The mother of Burns, devout of heart and calm of mind, brightened the lives of her children with the ballads of her beloved Scotland. The mother of Byron would smother him with kisses one moment, and the next call him a lame brat.

Both poets spent their early youth in Scotland, where the record of their school days is still preserved in their respective parishes. Burns read with equal avidity Taylor’s devotional works, Locke, Pope, Milton, Thomson and Young. He never minded work, if knowledge was the reward. Byron was devoted to the reading of history and poetry, and was at the head of many college rows. When, in conformity to the custom of the school, the order was so inverted as to make the boy of highest rank change places with the lowest, the teacher would call out to Byron: “Now, George, let us see how quick you will be foot again.”

Each had a favorite family servant. Byron wrote often to his old nurse of his triumphs in London. Burns says many of his songs were inspired by an old servant, Jenny Wilson, as she repeated her endless collection of songs and stories of devils, ghosts, fairies, witches, warlocks, kelpies, elf-candles and enchanted dragons.

Lady Blessington wrote of Byron’s appearance: “He is not tall, as I had fancied him. His appearance is, however, highly prepossessing; his head is finely shaped and the forehead open, high and noble, his eyes are gray and full of expression, his mouth is the most remarkable feature, the upper lip of Grecian shortness and the corners descending, the lips full and finely cut. In speaking, he shows his teeth very much, and they are white and even, but I observed that even in his smile—he smiles frequently—there is something of a scornful expression that is evidently natural. His countenance is full of expression and changes with the subject of conversation; it gains on the beholder the more it is seen, and leaves an agreeable impression. His voice and accent are peculiarly agreeable, clear, harmonious and so distinct that, though his general tone in speaking is rather low than high, not a word is lost.”

Burns, tall, well formed and graceful, was always a charming presence. The beautiful and all-accomplished Duchess of Gordon said that Burns was the most fascinating guest she ever saw entertained.

Speaking of the portrait by Alexander Nasmyth, Sir Walter Scott says: “This is the best likeness of Burns, but his features, as I remember them, were still more massive and imposing than they are represented in this picture. There was a strong expression of shrewdness in his lineaments, the eyes alone indicating the poetic character and temperament. They were large and dark and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such eyes in any other head.”

Attired always in the tip of the fashion, Byron was a drawing-room dude in the smart set of London. The dress of Burns was coarse and homely, made from his own sheep, carded by his own fire. His plaid was red and white, woven with great pride by his mother and sister. His home and the homes of his friends, were low-thatched cottages, consisting of kitchen and bedrooms, with floors of kneaded clay.

If the former set a fashion for collars which lasts to this good day, the latter has left us the Tam-o’-Shanter hat.

Burns was essentially musical, having begun his career by setting music to the verses of another.

Byron, in a luxurious salon, wooed and won a woman of fashion. Burns gives this account of his courtship with Highland Mary,

“We plighted our troth on the Sabbath to make it more sacred, seated by a running brook, that Nature might be a witness, over an open Bible, to show we remembered God in the compact.”

After a second edition of “Poems by an Ayrshire Plowman,” Burns spent the winter in Edinburgh, where he was the lion of the elegant coteries of the city.

Lords, ladies, men of letters, all with manners highly polished by attrition, found in him a barbarian who was not barbarous. As the poet met in at least one lord feelings as natural as those of a plowman, so they met in a plowman manners worthy of a lord.

Dugald Stewart writes: “His manner was easy and unperplexed; his address was perfectly well-bred and elegant in its simplicity; he felt neither eclipsed by the titled nor embarrassed before the learned and eloquent, but took his station with the ease of one born to it.”

Each poet had a brief political career. As exciseman for several years it was necessary for Burns to ride over two hundred miles per week, thus coming constantly in contact with the people. In this public service he made a record for being thorough, correct and at the same time humane.

Byron made as serious an effort in politics as was possible to his impetuous and headlong nature. After many hindrances he was granted a seat in the House of Lords. He traveled awhile, and, returning, made two or three speeches before the House. Between times he would correct the proof-sheets of “Childe Harold.” The publication of this poem put an end to his parliamentary ambitions. “When ‘Childe Harold’ was published,” he says, “no one ever afterward thought of my prose, nor indeed did I.” However, he also says, “I would not for the world be like my hero.”

Each spent much time alone with Nature, drinking from the exhaustless fountain of her varied life. Each loved her most in her wildest, fiercest moods. Power—they loved it, worshiped it; they felt it in them and all around them. It was the necessary food for their strenuous, tempest-tossed souls. Burns loved to walk on the sheltered side of a forest and listen to a storm rave among the trees. Better still, he loved to ascend some eminence and stride along its summit amid the flashes of the lightning and howls of the tempest: “Rapt in enthusiasm, I seemed to ascend to Him who walks on the wings of the wind.” Byron

spoke to him best through Nature’s most stupendous form, the turbulent, merciless ocean.

Byron reveled in the glories of more climes; Burns saw the marvels of more kingdoms, for he understood the language of the daisy and the mouse. The self-negating love, the exultant pride the Peasant Poet felt for his own bonnie Scotland, the English Peer lavished upon a foreign land. Burns said if he ever reached heaven, he would ask nothing better than just a Highland welcome.

Burns, in his innate appreciation of the dignity of humanity, is something of a Siegfried, with the fearless spirit of the forest vocal with the song of birds, the aroma of blossoming shrubs, the play of the waterfall and the restful stretch of meadows with their daisies and heather.

Byron, in the desolation of his youth, in his extremes of laughter and tears, in his yearning for sympathy, in his broodings over the mysteries of life, played the character of Hamlet with the world for a stage, leaving a kindred problem for the wonder of mankind.

Many of Byron’s shorter poems are from Bible stories and characters, and it is wonderful how his brilliant genius caught and reproduced both spirit and story. Burns gives us his thought of a religious life in that sweetest pastoral poem in all literature, “The Cotter’s Saturday Night.”

In the last few months of his life he did much to reproduce it in his own life, holding family prayer with such earnestness as to bring his hearers to tears over the penitence for sins and hope in the mercy of God.

In these poets the perceptive faculties roamed at will over a wide field of human activities, and voiced their impressions with a witchery of language which has hardly a parallel. The work of both men was revolutionizing in its effects. Burns found his countrymen in bondage to the fear of wraiths, hobgoblins and kindred spirits, and he was a mighty power in their deliverance. Taine estimates that he was as great a force in Scotland as the Revolution in France.

Byron is believed largely to have influenced the revolutionary movement in Germany. He gave a direct stimulus to the liberators of Italy, and ended his life in a heroic struggle for the liberties of Greece.

If Byron’s literary work is more resplendent and daring, Burns’s seems fresher from the varied living forces about us. If Byron’s is a circlet of sapphires, Burns’s is that same circlet transmuted by the alchemy of human sympathy to a wreath of never-fading violets.

When we remember that these colossal figures passed off the stage of life after thirty-seven short years, when we get a suggestion of the difficult circumstances and terrible temptations that encompassed their stormy young lives, we may well leave their failings to God, who alone is their moral Judge. It may be His compassion for them is commensurate with the powers with which He endowed them.