PRIDE AND PASSION
ROBERT BURNS 1759-1796
BY
DeLancey Ferguson
‘My great constituent elements are Pride and Passion.’
BURNS TO AGNES M’LEHOSE
DECEMBER 28, 1787
NEW YORK
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1939
Copyright, 1939, by Oxford University Press, New York, Inc.
First Edition
Printed in the United States of America
[Pg v]
All witnesses agree that Robert Burns was a vividand dynamic personality. All readers of his poetryconcur. Yet somehow the personality which blazesin the poems and glows in the letters only smouldersin the biographies. Why is it so hard to write adull life of, say, Byron, and so easy to write a dullone of Burns? For one thing, there are too many biographies,all following the same stereotyped outlineof dividing the poet’s life according to the places helived in instead of according to the things he did andthought. Then really graphic memorabilia arescarce, especially for the formative years in Ayrshire.People keep saying that Burns was a brillianttalker, but they seldom report his talk. Finally, toomany biographers have worked in the wrong mood,intent on moralizing or deprecating rather than interpreting.
This book is not a biography, if that word connotesa narrative written in straight time-sequence.It is, instead, my answer to the question, subordinatedor ignored by most chronological biographers,What sort of a man was Robert Burns? I have thereforediscarded time-sequence in favour of the relationshipsof everyday life in which Burns mostclearly revealed his personality. The plan has at[Pg vi]least the advantage of passing quickly over hisalmost undocumented youth, and concentratingattention upon his fully recorded manhood. Theformal biography, whether it be Mrs. Carswell’sromantic approach or Professor Snyder’s scholarlyone, suffers from the necessity of devoting morespace to the scantily reported twenty-seven years inAyrshire than to the five richly documented years inDumfries. I have assumed that Burns’s charactercan best be determined from the completest records.Perhaps to himself John Syme and Maria Riddellwere not so important as Robert Muir and MargaretChalmers, but the later friendships can bestudied at full length; the earlier ones cannot.Hence I have given most space to the relationshipsin which guess-work can be kept to a minimum.
So, too, I have deliberately limited myself to thebest authenticated sources—Burns’s own letters andpoems, and the letters and other records of his immediatecontemporaries. Unsupported oral traditionI have avoided as basic material. Though I usesuch anecdotes now and again as secondary illustrations,it is always with a warning as to theirnature. I have likewise tried to make clear the distinctionbetween facts and the inferences I havedrawn from them.
In one respect at least my preparation for writingabout Burns is unique. Most editors and biographershave either been bred in the rosy mists ofthe Burns legend or have worked their way back to theoriginal records through a mass of secondary printed[Pg vii]matter. Up to a dozen years ago my knowledge ofBurns and his times included little beyond suchreading of major works and standard criticism a