Robert burns and the enlightenment ralph richard mclean iss28

ROBERT BURNS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT

By Ralph Richard McLean The trip which Robert Burns made to Edinburgh in the winter of 1786 has long been held up as the moment where the genius vernacular poet came into contact with pedantic anglicising critics. In the subsequent attempts to enshrine the egalitarian credentials of the bard as well as his superior intellect, the literati of Edinburgh were transformed into little more than pantomime villains, whose treatment of Burns as a rustic sideshow only exposed their own ignorance of his true abilities. Far from ‘sticking it to the man’, however, Burns had a far more complex and subtle interaction with the guardians of Scotland’s enlightenment culture.

While he certainly had a turbulent relationship with them, the dismissal of an entire branch of the enlightenment establishment in Scotland defeats the purpose of what the Enlightenment stood for – a free exchange of ideas – in which both sides partook during his time in the capital.

The standard trope which has been used in the past to demonstrate Burns’s superiority over the literati he encountered there has been for critics to point to the absence of Scotland’s ‘A-list’ Enlightenment thinkers, David Hume, who had died in 1776, and Adam Smith, who was too ill to attend. Effectively the argument goes that only these two men would have possessed the intellectual arsenal capable of engaging Burns, which in turn would have made his stay in Edinburgh more worthwhile. This scenario would have been at best unlikely; for Hume, although he took an interest in promoting Scottish poetry, was more obsessed with championing neoclassical standards of Scottish literary identity, which resulted in him labelling minor poets such as Thomas Blacklock and William Wilkie as the Scottish Pindar and the Scottish Homer. Likewise

Smith in his Lectures on literary composition seldom used examples from the Scottish Canon, and instead focused on the English writers, most notably Joseph Addison and Samuel Richardson.

However, it was Jonathan Swift whom Smith believed had reached the pinnacle of his desired style of composition. It would be folly to suggest that Edinburgh was bereft of quality conversation for the bard however. Dugald Stewart, the first biographer of Smith, and perhaps the ablest of the second generation of literati, was in Edinburgh at the time of Burns’s visit. Stewart, who was no mean moral philosopher himself, wrote highly of Burns, and specifically stated that he had been charmed by the quality of his conversations with him.

Even before Burns arrived in Edinburgh to promote his poetry, he had drawn deeply from the well of Scottish Enlightenment thought. And it was Smith who provided the richest nourishment.

His groundbreaking work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), more than any other, exposed the poet to the world of Enlightenment thought and instilled in Burns a philosophical understanding of sympathy which would go on to become a hallmark of his poetry.

Burns was quite open about the influence that Smith had over him, remarking in his First Commonplace Book, ‘I entirely agree with that judicious philosopher Mr Smith in his excellent Theory of Moral Sentiments, that Remorse is the most painful sentiment that can embitter the human bosom.’ Without this Enlightenment work, Burns may still have created poems such as ‘To a Louse’ and ‘To a Mouse’, but they would not have been constructed in the same way.

‘To a Louse’, for example, would still contain a great deal of comedy and humour, but would have been robbed of its philosophical conclusion

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which gives the poem its real power. Burns’s invitation ‘To see oursels as ithers see us’ is a moment for psychological reflection, and at the same time resonates with the Smithian idea of being able to put oneself in the position of another in order to express genuine sympathy for the suffering of another. It was primarily through an understanding and appreciation of Smith’s investigations that Burns was able to add a psychological layer to his concept of sympathy.

This psychological strain of critical thinking was not only an influence on Burns, it also stimulated major Enlightenment figures such as Henry Home, and Lord Kames, whose Elements of Criticism (1762) constructed a psychological system as a means for the individual to internally absorb literature and respond critically to it.

The most explicit instance of sympathy in a literary medium in Scotland is Henry Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling (1771) in which the main character Harley Cameron is placed in certain situations, sometimes quite improbably, which result in him shedding single tears of sympathy; thus demonstrating a restrained sensibility acceptable to a polite readership. At the time the book was a great success and was an important icon for the literati of Scotland, for despite their notable endeavours in the fields of history, literary criticism, economics, sociology, anthropology, geology, chemistry, and law, to name but a few, they had not been able to produce literature, either prose or poetry that was of a comparable standard. Therefore, the Man of Feeling represented an opportunity for the literati to shout about their literary achievements.

Burns too was a fan of the novel, and described it as a book, ‘I prize next to the Bible’. In a letter to Mrs Dunlop he outlined why the work had affected him to such an extent, and at the same time provided an insight into Enlightenment ideals that had touched his heart. ‘From what book, moral or even Pious, will the susceptible young mind receive impressions more congenial to Humanity and Kindness, Generosity and Benevolence, in short, all that ennobles the Soul to herself, or endears her to others, than

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from the simple affecting tale of poor Harley?’1 Although the book has dated poorly for a modern audience, it was clearly an influential piece in its day, and Burns found several key enlightenment ideals enshrined in its pages.

As well as the works of Mackenzie, including The Mirror and The Lounger, Burns demonstrated in a letter to Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster that he was aware of some of the Enlightenment works produced by other members of the literati. In his capacity as book purchaser for a small club named the Monkland’s Friendly Society, Burns had bought Hugh Blair’s Sermons, William Robertson’s The History of Scotland, David Hume’s History of the Stewarts, and The Spectator, as well as a number of literary works.2 Even the letter which Burns sent was indicative of his engagement in the wider Enlightenment community, for the man to whom he wrote the letter, John Sinclair, was in the process of an ambitious project which would provide information on all the Parishes in the country.

The Statistical Account of Scotland (1791-1797) was a grand social and economic venture which had a huge impact in the country, and also illustrated that enlightenment ideals were not solely located in the universities or found in books, but were located at all levels of Scottish society.

The idea of putting oneself in another’s shoes was taken to the extreme in ‘To a Mouse’ where Burns extended his sympathy beyond the merely human realm to include all of God’s creatures. The benevolence that Burns proffered to the mouse was not the condescending sympathy of an uninterested party, but rather the disinterested benevolence that was placed in man by a wise creator. Therefore, there is no superior attitude to the lowly stature of the mouse, which is indicated by Burns’s reference to ‘earth born companion’ and ‘fellow mortal’. The principles of this conception of a disinterested benevolence had been disseminated in the early eighteenth century by Francis Hutcheson.

In this respect, Burns also owes a debt to Hutcheson, a man widely regarded as the ‘Father of the Scottish Enlightenment’, and Smith’s teacher when he attended the University of Glasgow. Smith ultimately refined many of his mentor’s philosophical inquiries, but he freely admitted the influence that, in his own words, ‘the never to be forgotten Hutcheson’ had wielded over him. Hutcheson was the first person in Britain to conduct a critical inquiry into the nature of aesthetics which he published as An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725). One of the central conclusions which he drew in the work was the belief that the best type of action which an individual could carry out was that which resulted in the greatest amount of happiness, with the worst actions being those that occasioned the greatest amount of misery. This philosophy was something which Burns articulated in his letters, but which also made appearances in his poetry. In a letter to Mrs Dunlop, Burns expressed himself in a manner similar to that of the Enlightenment philosopher: ‘Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or an individual in it, this is my measure of iniquity.’3 Hutcheson, and his fellow Glasgow Professor, William Leechman who held the Chair of Divinity, were also important figures in educating a new breed of enlightened Presbyterian ministers who would go on to form the moderates in the Church of Scotland.

Theologically Leechman was an important figure at Glasgow for he taught the generation of moderate ministers who would eventually be on familiar terms with Burns. Men such as John M’Math and William M’Gill attended his lectures, and praised his enlightened brand of theology which demonstrated an appreciation for literature and encouraged free intellectual enquiry, while at the same time promoted a love of Christian truth and piety. At the time of his appointment Hutcheson enthused that he would ‘put a new face upon Theology in Scotland’.4 In many ways Leechman was able to do this with his students, which was of great significance in the West of Scotland where the covenanting tradition was still a powerful force to be reckoned with. The education of a new breed of minister in the West of Scotland provided a bulwark against the more extreme forms of Protestant preaching, and provided the opportunity to establish a more moderate brand. It would be imprudent to claim Leechman as one of the great Enlightenment thinkers of Scotland; however, he did demonstrate a range of

original thinking, and the fact that he educated a generation of Scottish clergymen and inculcated them with enlightened ideals, created the type of religious moderatism to which Burns was exposed in his youth. That Burns would have been influenced by the enlightened moderate clergy is hardly surprising given his upbringing.

His father was a man stimulated by the moderate teachings and would regularly engage his sons in religious debate, therefore putting into practice the free exchange of ideas cultivated by the enlightened clergy.

As Liam McIlvanney has previously identified, New Light, or moderate Presbyterianism was one of the most important intellectual influences on Burns, and a movement which exposed him to Enlightenment ideals not only propounded in Scotland, but at a wider European level.5 When dealing with the Enlightenment in Scotland, one must always be acutely aware of the unique position it held within the general European Enlightenment. Instead of being in opposition to the repressive forces of the Church in the way that the French Enlightenment operated, the Scottish system ran in conjunction with the Church, and in many respects was actually the engine that powered it. Therefore, in several important instances, the impulses of the Scottish Enlightenment emanated from the establishment, rather than in reaction to it. The moderates in the Church adhered to certain key principles of which Burns would have approved. These principles included benevolence, tolerance, defiance of tyranny and private judgement. It was through the encouragement of exercising private judgement that Burns came to form his own critical response to the Church of Scotland, and crystallise his opinions on the division between the moderate and evangelical split in the country.

Such a free intellectual inquiry permitted him not only to criticise the moderate regime where he felt there to be hypocrisy, but also in some cases to admire certain elements of the evangelicals’ style, even though he rejected many of their hard line stances over religious matters. This complicated relationship that Burns had with the two sides can be detected most clearly in ‘The Holy Fair’ where all the preachers in some way fail to inspire their congregation.

Some fail

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through their lack of warmth and wisdom, while others attempt to terrify their charges into subservience which serves no purpose.

The moderate regime in Scotland held sway over a powerful cultural agenda, and when Burns arrived in Edinburgh, there was still enough of an intellectual presence in the city which was capable of engaging with him. Adam Ferguson and Hugh Blair, as well as Dugald Stewart and Alexander Dalziel all met him, and indeed it was at Ferguson’s home where the famous meeting between Burns and Sir Walter Scott took place.

Burns’s relationship with Blair in particular has remained at best problematic. For too long the perception of Blair as a pompous interfering pedant meddling with the Bard and his writings has obscured any genuine investigation into a meaningful two-way interaction. James DeLancey Ferguson, in a statement typical of the perceived relationship between the two, believed that only the ‘ungainly integrity of his genius saved Burns from the emasculation at the hands of Blair and his ilk.’6 Much has been made of the efforts of the literati to offer Burns poetic advice when he was in Edinburgh, which understandably irritated him. The predominant enlightenment figures in Scotland during this period were in possession of either a theological or a legal background, and they were not slow in offering him the benefit of their own learning. In almost every instance Burns rightly ignored these genuine, if misguided, attempts to ‘improve’ his poetry. It was no surprise then that Blair, who had held the Regius Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at Edinburgh University, and had a British, and growing European reputation as an arbiter of taste and composition, also offered his opinions to Burns. The moderate clergyman suggested seven improvements which Burns could make to his poems, and of these suggestions Burns adopted two. The most famous of these is line 103 in ‘The Holy Fair’, which Blair argued read weakly as, ‘wi’ tidings of Salvation’. He believed that Burns ought to be able to contrive some other rhyme which he did by altering ‘Salvation’ to ‘Damnation’. There are two points here which are frequently overlooked when appraising Blair’s relationship with Burns. Primarily emphasis is given to the fact that Burns rejected five of Blair’s suggestions; however, given that the majority of the literati proffered improvements only to have them declined, the fact that Burns even adopted two of them indicates that he had more than a passing respect for the Edinburgh professor. Secondly, that Blair could read ‘The Holy Fair’, a poem which criticised moderate preaching styles as much as it did evangelical, and mention only a word change in the poem,

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suggests that Blair was not entirely dispossessed of irony and humour. All the more remarkable on the grounds that Blair had written extensively on pulpit eloquence in his highly successful publication, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783). Burns also acquiesced to Blair’s request that ‘The Jolly Beggars’ be omitted from the Edinburgh edition of his poems owing to the dubious content matter. Sadly he also advised against publishing a now lost poem, ‘The Prophet and God’s Complaint’ in the same edition on similar grounds. Before one starts cursing Blair’s interference for adding to the list of lost Burns poems, it is necessary to remember that Burns himself had left ‘The Jolly Beggars’ out of the Kilmarnock edition. Therefore this has the ring of sound commercial guidance advising him not to include anything that would alienate a potentially lucrative market.

That Blair had a reputation for vanity and pomposity is not disputed, even his close associates had picked up on it. His attitude certainly never escaped Burns either. In his Second Commonplace Book, Burns observed, ‘In my opinion Dr Blair is merely an astonishing proof of what industry and application can do.

Natural parts like his are frequently to be met with and his vanity is proverbially known among his acquaintances.’ Nevertheless, Burns was not blind to his abilities, and he acknowledged that Blair was, ‘justly at the head of what may be called fine writing … In short, he is truly a worthy and most remarkable character.’ He was also capable of great magnanimity, which he demonstrated when Burns attended a dinner party at Blair’s house. When asked which places he felt had given him the greatest gratification, Burns opted to say the High Church, but instead of choosing Blair as his preacher of choice, selected his colleague and successor in the Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, William Greenfield. In order to reduce the embarrassment of what Burns admitted later was a painful moment, Blair generously seconded Burns’s intimation.

The often-quoted term, ‘Heaven-taught ploughman’ which Henry Mackenzie bestowed upon Burns is also symptomatic of a more intricate exchange between the literati and the bard. On one level the depiction of Burns as ‘Heaven-taught’ reduced a complex individual to a one-dimensional construct in order to serve an enlightenment agenda that had become overly focused on finding the noble savage.

It was Rousseau who had first hypothesised the existence of the noble savage, which subsequently resulted in a search to find such

an individual or indeed group. The Scottish literati were particularly guilty of this, locating the noble savage not only in the guise of the highlander, but also in the poetic works of Ossian, a supposed third century bard who came from a primitive culture, yet wrote with a sensibility and sublimity that would have delighted a reader in the eighteenth century. On face value it would appear that Burns had been sacrificed by the literati to the Gods of the Enlightenment in order to ensure that the noble savage would rise again; however, there is a more subtle exchange going on here than would appear at first glance.

Burns was shrewd enough to realise that if he wanted the patronage of the literati, which was necessary to help promote his new edition, and in turn secure more sales, he would need to appease the establishment in some way.

Effectively the ‘Heaven-taught’ ploughman was a marketing ploy which provided the literati with an opportunity to promote one of their cherished, albeit misguided, enlightenment ideals, while at the same time it supplied Burns with a gimmick that would initially garner attention, but would ultimately lead to a more cogent focus on his very real product. Burns himself was not averse to playing up to this reputation when he thought that it could offer him some advantage. Indeed it would appear to be a partly cultivated image on his part, which he alluded to in his First Commonplace Book. In seeking inspiration to compose an air in the ‘old Scotch style’, Burns invoked his muse: ‘I hope my poor, country Muse, who, all rustic, awkward, and unpolished as she is, has more charms for me than any other of the pleasures of life beside’.

Here even in 1785 there is evidence of Burns playing with his image. Burns’s ability to ‘play the game’ allowed him in a sense, to succeed where Robert Fergusson had run into problems. His reaction against the literati, most notably in the highly amusing yet highly impudent, ‘The Sow of Feeling’ attacked the sensibility of the literati to such an extent that it effectively put an end to any potential patronage they would extend to him. In the case of Burns, people inevitably began to see through this synthetic identity, mainly owing to the deep learning which the

supposedly ‘Heaven-taught’ ploughman expressed in his poetry. John Logan, writing in the English Review pointed to the fact that Burns had a deeper knowledge of the English poets than some of the English authors themselves. Dalziel, the Greek professor at Edinburgh University, likewise alluded to Burns’s more than passing acquaintance with English prose and verse.

In his assessment of Enlightenment culture, David Daiches labelled it confused and complex, and although the period was in a sense a ‘Golden Age’ of literary and intellectual enquiry, it was a distinction that came at the price of national schizophrenia.7 Daiches is right to identify the Enlightenment as complex, but as a result of this complexity he boils down the complicated interactions which do not fit a standard pattern of national identity into the one-dimensional label of national schizophrenia. Under his classification Burns himself would be one of the most pronounced sufferers, for he wrote poetry from the local, Scottish and British perspectives, celebrating identities in one circle which would appear incongruous in the next. Janet Sorenson has argued that this situation was only acceptable to the literati because of Samuel Johnson’s displacement of class difference for national difference, which gained credence in Edinburgh, and therefore made Burns safe for consumption.8 However, the literati were themselves negotiating the paths between a Scottish and a British identity, and would hardly have been likely to dismiss a genuine Scottish product that would bolster their own sense of Scottish identity within Britain on a purely class basis. The fault of the literati was their attempt to force the square peg of the bard’s poetry into the round hole of enlightenment sensibility and the cult of the noble savage; and was not the result of any perceived attempts to disenfranchise Burns from the top table of Enlightenment.

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In any case the Enlightenment reached deeper into Scottish culture than simply existing in the rarefied strata of polite Edinburgh society. Burns was also exposed to this environment, and in many respects felt more at home here, than hobnobbing with the literati. This second tier of Enlightenment still included eminent thinkers capable of engaging Burns, not only intellectually, but also convivially. The most notable of these figures was William Smellie, the editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1768-1771) and the author of a two-volume Philosophy of Natural History which became a set text at Harvard University. Burns described him warmly as that ‘Old Veteran in Genius, Wit and Bawdry’ and it was through Smellie that Burns came to be a member of the Crochallan Fencibles. This circle also included prominent figures such as William Dunbar, William Nicol and Alexander Cunningham, all men capable of enlightenment thought, despite the criticisms of Duglad Stewart who dismissed them as ‘not very select society.’

Although Burns may have had more kindred spirits among these enlightenment figures, he was nevertheless capable of traversing both groups. Thus, just as he was able to move between different layers of identity, so too was he adept at moving between different registers of enlightenment.

This ability of Burns marks him as a true proponent of the Enlightenment. In a sense Burns was both of, and not of, the Enlightenment.

This should not be taken to mean that Burns was labouring under some kind of schizophrenia, but rather is indicative of a complex individual who engaged in a myriad of interests and pursuits, sometimes working in perfect harmony, sometimes appearing to create conflict with one another. Burns engaged with the enlightenment establishment in Scotland, particularly its brand of moderate religion and free intellectual enquiry, and was not averse to adhering to their ideas when they proved acceptable to him. Likewise, the literati of Edinburgh were not unappreciative of his poetic efforts. Where the tension lay was over the fact that each wanted different things from the other. It was in this social milieu, and part of the ethos of the Enlightenment itself, that each could accommodate the other.

(Endnotes) 1 2 3 4 5

obert Burns, Letters of Robert Burns, G. Ross Roy, ed., (2 R vols., Oxford, 1985), II, p. 25.

Burns, Letters, I, pp. 108-109.

Burns, Letters, I, p. 419.

F rancis Hutcheson, Glasgow University Library (GUL) MS Gen. 1018.15.

Liam McIlvanney, Burns the Radical: Poetry and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland (East Linton, 2002), pp.

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6 7 8

123-144.

James DeLancey Ferguson, ‘Burns and Hugh Blair’ Modern Language Notes 45 (1930), p. 446.

David Daiches, Robert Burns, p. 1.

Janet Sorenson, The Grammar of Empire in EighteenthCentury British Writing (Cambridge, 2000), p. 155.