Critique of Burns

It is the 252nd anniversary of Robert Burns' birth.  Sir Walter Scott met the older Burns once when he was a youth.  He also critiqued a work of Burns' in the Quarterly Review.  This review was later published in a collection of Burns critiques titled "Early Critical Reviews of Robert Burns".  In Scott's critique, he draws on the work of Dr. James Currie, whose review is also published in this book.  Scott's review is lengthy, and sometimes hard hitting, but recognizes the bard's unique gift.  It begins:


By SIR WALTER SCOTT.


From "the Quarterly Review," February, 1809.

A REVIEW OF "RELIQUES OF ROBERT BURNS."

We opened a book bearing so interesting a title with no little anxiety. Literary reliques vary in species and value almost as much as those of the Catholic or of the antiquary. Some deserve a golden shrine for their intrinsic merit; some are valued from the pleasing recollections and associations with which they are combined; some, reflecting little honour upon their unfortunate authors, are dragged by interested editors from merited obscurity. The character of Burns, on which we may perhaps hazard some remark in the course of this article, was such as to increase our apprehensions. The extravagance of genius with which this wonderful man was gifted, being in his later and more evil days directed to no fixed or general purpose, was, in the morbid state of his health and feelings, apt to display itself in hasty sallies of virulent and unmerited severity—sallies often regretted by the bard himself; and of which justice to the living and to the dead alike demanded the suppression. Neither was this anxiety lessened when we recollected the pious care with which the late excellent Dr. Currie had performed the task of editing the works of Burns. His selection was limited, as much by respect to the fame of the living as of the dead. He dragged from obscurity none of those satirical effusions which ought to be as ephemeral as the transient offences which called them forth. He excluded everything approaching to licence, whether in morals or religion, andthus rendered his collection such as, doubtless, Burns himself, in his moments of sober reflection, would have most highly approved. Yet applauding, as we do most highly applaud, the leading principles of Dr. Currie's selection, we are aware that they sometimes led him into fastidious and over-delicate rejection of the bard's most spirited and happy effusions...'

James Currie

Robert Burns' first biographer, Dr. James Currie, was born this day (May 31) in 1756.  Currie emigrated to Virginia in 1771, the year of Scott's birth, to serve as an apprentice tobacco factor.  Suffering ill health, Currie decided in 1776 to return to Scotland, with the object of studying medicine.  It took more than one try to sail out of revolutionary America, but he reached England in 1777, ultimately establishing himself as a physician in Liverpool.  Here he began to contribute to professional journals, and as an anti-slavery advocate.

Currie gained renown for his treatment using hydropathy, involving cold water cures.  His studies of hydropathy were the first to record the clinical use of thermometers in measuring fever.  Currie published his observations in "Medical Reports on the Effects of Water, Cold and Warm, as a Remedy in Fevers and Other Diseases (1797)".

Currie appreciated Burns' poetry, and was chosen to edit his work for a volume published by Cadell and Davies.  While undertaking this task, Currie reached out to others in the literary trade, including Walter Scott.  In at least one letter, Scott discusses Burns' possible authorship of the poem "Evan Banks", which Burns published.


EVAN BANKS.


Slow spreads the gloom my soul desires,
The sun from India s shore retires;
To Evan Banks with temperate ray,
Home of my youth, he leads the day.
Oh banks to me for ever dear !
Oh streams whose murmurs still I hear!
All, all my hopes of bliss reside
Where Evan mingles with the Clyde.

And she, in simple beauty drest,
Whose image lives within my breast;
Who trembling heard my parting sigh,
And long pursued me with her eye;
Does she, with heart unchanged as mine,
Oft in the vocal bowers recline ?
Or where you grot o'erhangs the tide,
Muse while the Evan seeks the Clyde ?


Ye lofty banks that Evan bound !
Ye lavish woods that wave around,
And o'er the stream your shadows throw,
Which sweetly winds so far below !
What secret charm to memory brings
All that on Evan's border springs ?
Sweet banks ! ye bloom by Mary's side ;
Blest stream ! she views thee haste to Clyde.


Can all the wealth of India's coast
Atone for years in absence lost ?
Return, ye moments of delight,
With richer treasures bless my sight!
Swift from this desert let me part,
And fly to meet a kindred heart!
Nor more may aught my steps divide
From that dear stream which flows to Clyde.