At the last meeting of the Shanghai Literary and Debating Society, Mr. G. M. H. Playfair, H.B.M.'s Consul at Ningpo, read a paper on " Robert Burns " before a large audience. It was so much enjoyed that it will doubtless be welcomed by a still wider circle, and therefore we purpose printing it in full.
Mr. Playfair said—Some one, himself of the brotherhood, once explained with more wit than accuracy, that the Republic of Letters was so called because it was impossible to find sovereign among the memers. If one may judge by the stories one hears of authors' profits, this is not quite true; but there is another and a better reason why the fraternity of literary men should be designated a Republic, and that is because nothing but public election and popular acclaim will raise the most ambitious to the rank of leader. Nothing, absolutely nothing, else will do it. Riches are useless, rank is vain, influence is impotent; even genius will not do it if that genius has not been revealed and come home to the people in general, who alone are the "fountain of honour." In this connection the subject of my lecture remarks in one of his most celebrated Lyrics "The prince can make a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that But an honest man's above his might, Guid faith, he manna fa' that."
And so it is of a national poet; Kings are wwerless to invest them. The Queen, as we have lately seen, can make a Poet Laureate; she can grant him a yearly haunch of venison, an annual kilderkin of sack or an allowance of £70 as an equivalent, but she cannot make Alfred Austin England's darling. Immortality is beyond her. Few recipients of immortality from posterity have begun lower in the social scale or under less auspicious circumstances than Robert Burns, who occupies the highest pinnacle among the bards of Scotland. I may as well state frankly at the outset that I do not claim for him an equality with the highest among the poets of the universe, Scotland has not produced a poet of the very first rank, but then few countries have. England, Greece, Italy, France, Germany, you can number them off on the fingers of one hand, and it may be pointed out that the poems which the world has pronounced preéminent have all been either dramatic orepic. Burns thought of the dramatic but never attempted it; he never even thought of the epic. - He confined himself exclusively to the lyric and the descriptive, and on these founded a fame which was great in his own day and which has only increased during the hundred years which have since elapsed. One of his biographers, estimating his powers, was guilty of fo exaggeration and has left us a true criticism which ly worth repeating "As a poet Burns is not, of course, to be ranked with any of the higher denominations. He competes not with the Homers or the Miltons, scarcely even with the Drydens or Popes. But he stands in a very noble rank by himself as one who treated with unapproached felicity all the sensuous familiar things which lay around him in the world. It may be said, that he is happy in the treating of these things in a great measure by reason of his singular command of language. Whatever idea was within him, there was a channel of express sion for it, by which it came out in full and true lineaments, and without a single sacrifice to rant, or trick, or the exigencies of verse. The possession of this language power, Horatian as it was, would have never of itself made a great poet; but it and the fruitful mind together, conferred an advantage which there was no resisting. When we seck to ascertain what itis in the thoughts and feelings of Burns which blesses us so much, we find. that it mainly is their unaffected simplicity and naivete. He was the true man before he was the true poet." One point in this estimate I feel inclined demur to. That is the tentative placing of Burns below Pope. To be quite dispassionate, it might be merely argued that the tio writers were not at all on the same plane and cannot therefore be fairly compared. I would personally venture to goa step further and maintain that while Burns was a poet, Pope was merely a writer of verse. Pope was a philosopher and expressed his philosophy with great beauty and propriety of language; so much so that next to Shakespeare, who towers tuo loftily to be brought into the comparison, he is perhaps the best quoted author we But you can search in vain for feeling in Pope, while Burns was all quivering with it from the first line he wrote to the last; and as far as my judgment is worth mentioning, a poet Vith-out feeling is a contradiction in terms. Comparisons are rightfully deprecated as odious, but at times they are useful as affording a standard, It is well nigh senseless to compare Burns. with Pope, because, as I have said, the two writers occupy different planes. ' It would as appropriate to draw a parallel between Wordsworth and Moliere. But if we take the Irish lyrist, Thomas Moore, we may properly draw comparisons between him and Burns, and there can be little doubt that these will be greatly to the advantage of the Scot. In either case the poets set their national melodies to verse more or Jess immortal, but while Burns has set many hearers tingling with the personal passion of his lyrics, Moore excites little note than acold admiration for the beauty of his language and the skill with which he has wedded his lines to his melodies. It can scarcely be imagined from perusal of the Irish Melodies, beautiful, delicate, refined as they are, that the more elegant Irishman had the' same intense love and enthusiasm for his native airs that the half-educated pote of Ayrshire had for the Scottish Muse. In mere quantity of production there may not be much to choose between them, butin quality if loyal love and devotion count for anything—and with us Scots where our country is concerned they count for much—Burns must come out far ahead. But even apart from his own numerous and unrivalled additions to the songs of Scotland, we have only to read his correspondence with Johnson, editor of the Scots' Musical Museum, and george Thomson who produced a later collection of Scottish Melodies. A large number of the letters posing between Burns and Thomson have fortunately been preserved and published, and from them we are enabled to judge how deep-set was the affection which the poet owned for the songs of his country. In his letter replying to Thomson's application for his cooperation, he writes: "I have just this moment got your letter. As the request you make to me will positively add to my enjoyments in complying with it, I shall enter into your undertaking with all the small portion of abilities I have, strained to their utmost exertion by the impulse of enthusiasm. Only don't hurry me. *Deil take the hindmost' is by no means the cri de guerre of my muse. Will you, as I am inferior to none of you in enthusiastic attachment to the poetry and music of old Caledonia, and, since you request it, have cheerfully promised my mite of assistance—will you let me have a list of your airs, with the first line of the printed verses you intend for them, that I may have an oppor-may coos bal at one know tis in the tunity of suggesting any alteration that way of my trade; still, leaving you, gentlemen, the undoubted right of Sublishors to approve or reject, at your pleasure, for your own publication. 4) if you are for English verses, there is, on my part, end of the matter. Whether in the simplicity of the ballad, or the pathos of the song,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.