SOURCE: Light from Heaven: Love in British Romantic Literature, Northern Illinois University Press, 1971, 288 p.

[In the excerpt below Beaty analyzes Burns's use of humor in his writings about romantic love.]

Robert Burns's distinction as a love poet stems chiefly from his ability to perceive the comic aspects of what he considered a very serious emotion. The eighteenth-century adaptation of sentiment to comedy, as well as the Scottish vernacular tradition, afforded him ample precedent for this seemingly paradoxical combination. As random comments in his letters indicate, he was obviously interested in examining the comic spirit; yet he apparently elaborated no critical manifesto of his own to explain his practice. Perhaps because he was often regarded as an inspired but untaught genius who succeeded without conscious artistry, influential critics of the early nineteenth century usually looked not to him for illustrations of their comic theories but rather to Jean Paul Richter, who had obligingly translated his own precepts into concrete examples. Not until after many of the speculations about humor had crystallized into definite concepts could Burns's achievement be fully analyzed.¹ Just as his poetry had unwittingly sanctioned in advance many of the tenets enunciated in Wordsworth's preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800), so too his portrayals of comic love anticipated theories of subsequent analysts and, consequently, have become increasingly meaningful in the light of critical doctrines articulated after his practice.

As Romantic critics saw it, the dichotomy between humor and wit inherited from the eighteenth century constituted one of the basic cleavages between neoclassicism and their own aesthetic of natural sensibility. In his introduction to Lectures on the English Comic Writers, Hazlitt made the distinction explicit: "Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy."² Whereas wit, being contrived and generally derisive, was considered the province of the mind, humor, being natural and empathie, belonged essentially to the heart. Similarly De Quincey, when he attempted to popularize Richter's philosophical theories on the comic, carefully emphasized the distinction between wit as "a purely intellectual thing" and humor as a phenomenon that brought into play "the moral nature" involving the will, affections, and temperament.³ Humor in Richter's creative works, according to De Quincey, was interwoven with pathos, his gentle satire characterized by smiles rather than by scornful laughter. Subsequently Carlyle, who had assimilated much of the comic psychology in Richter's Vorschule der Aesthetik (1804), demeaned the irony and caricature of neoclassical satirists to a position conspicuously lower than that of humor. "True humour," Carlyle explained in his second essay on Richter, "springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt, its essence is love; it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper."⁴ Through a kinship with sensibility, therefore, the ultimate justification of humor resembled that for human love: it helped unite man with mankind.

Despite objections from purists who preferred their emotions and their genres unalloyed, the analogy of love and humor was generally endorsed by Romantic critics as a valid precept for life, as well as art. Even the delicate question of whether the heart was capable of sympathetic laughter was argued affirmatively by Lamb, who differentiated between "the petrifying sneer of a demon which excludes and kills Love" and "the cordial laughter of a man which implies and cherishes it."⁵ By laughing with rather than at humanity, one might enjoy himself while heightening his benevolent proclivities. And if humor was produced by what was universally comic, laughter, especially from a man sufficiently perceptive to associate the ludicrous with traits in himself, could prove highly edifying. Keats, in the letter that evolves his principle of imaginative identification, selfless sympathy, and suspended judgment known as "negative capability," significantly progressed toward this doctrine from a statement praising the superiority of humor over wit.⁶ As Keats realized, humor enabled an imaginative understanding whereby one was made to feel rather than (as in wit) to start. Furthermore, the artistic advantages of humor were seen to rest on valid psychological grounds. As both De Quincey and Carlyle pointed out in their respective analyses of Richter, humor prevented sensibility from deteriorating into maudlin sentimentality. However serious the emotion of love might be, a touch of the comic—what Bergson in his essay Laughter defined as "a momentary anesthesia of the heart"—contributed to a healthful perspective. The conjunction of active and passive, far from annihilating one another, restored a sane equilibrium appropriate to the Romantic goal of unified sensibilities. By its very nature life was seen to be full of incongruities, paradoxes, and frustrations imposed by mundane limitations. Yet if the dominant principle of life was (like that of its creator) love, then the force striving for unity with the infinite tended to transcend finite limitations. Hence the juxtaposition of finite and infinite, which Richter postulated as the true source of humor, contributed to the desired totality of existence.

The soundness of Romantic insight, striving for the union of reason, sentiment, intuition, and imagination, was later confirmed by professional psychologists. Sigmund Freud, who endorsed many of the Romantic theories on the comic derived from Richter, demonstrated that levity, however pleasurable, was an earnest matter, especially when it involved "broken" humor "that smiles through tears."⁷ Subsequent psychologists have also explained the compatibility of love and humor in their own terms without seriously disrupting Romantic concepts. While love is customarily associated now with the integrative or self-transcending tendency and the comic spirit with the self-assertive, human emotions are usually mixed. Love, in all except its hypothetically pure instances, is sufficiently ambivalent to include some of the self-assertive. Sexual love, particularly in regard to masculine behavior, contains enough of the aggressive to invite forms of the comic that are indeed far less sympathetic than humor. Nor does laughter provoked by such instances undermine the essential seriousness, for the emotions meet on common ground.

Yet exactly how much of prevalent theory on comic love Burns was consciously aware of is difficult to ascertain. It seems likely, however, that he may have been acquainted with one of the longest treatises on the comic spirit, that by the Scottish philosopher-poet James Beattie, whose poems and essays Burns greatly admired.⁸ Continuing the traditions first popularized by Addison and Steele (and later by Sterne), Beattie, in his "Essay on Laughter and Ludicrous Composition" (1776), claimed that laughter arising from innocent mirth was not only therapeutically desirable but also indicative of a benevolent, rather than a spiteful, nature. Moreover, he predicted a genre of which Burns was to become the chief poetical exponent. "As romantic love in its natural regular procedure is now become so copious a source of joy and sorrow, hope and fear, triumph and disappointment," Beattie asserted, "we might reasonably conclude, that in its more whimsical forms and vagaries it could scarce fail to supply materials for laughter."⁹ His views on the vis comica were essentially standard, even though his terminology differed somewhat from that of other aestheticians and his specific definitions perhaps did not indicate rigid classification.¹⁰Wit he described as the "unexpected discovery of resemblance between ideas supposed dissimilar"—a kind of discordia concors such as Dr. Johnson saw in metaphysical analogies. Humor Beattie identified with the "comic exhibition of singular characters, sentiments, and imagery." Yet he certainly divided the comic spirit into two categories according to the responses it evoked: the ridiculous arousing contempt or disapproval, and the ludicrous producing an uncomplicated, risible emotion. This latter reaction was brought about by the pleasant awareness of inconsistencies—often in an unusual mixture of similarity and contrariety. As the "Essay" further analyzed it, innocent laughter could be purely "animal" if occasioned by tickling or sudden gladness and "sentimental" when it proceeded from feeling or sentiment. Since theories such as these were already formulated, Burns, who was especially sensitive to the incongruities of certain character traits in particular situations, had only to put the sentimental comic into practice.

Before fully understanding Burns's treatment of "romantic love," however, one must recognize that to him sexual attraction was the most compelling justification for existence. Complete gratification in love became virtually synonymous with the pursuit of happiness; and from this basic premise, which colored all he had to say about love, stemmed the related attitudes expressed throughout his poetry. Associated from the beginning with poetic inspiration, this "delicious Passion," as he explained to Dr. John Moore, was held "to be the first of human joys, our dearest pleasure here below."¹¹ His most celebrated affirmation of loyalty to the eternal feminine, "Green grow the Rashes," declares that lasses alone compensate for the anxieties of life.¹² Dividing humanity into those with hearts and those without, Burns vows his preference for the simple joys of making love, one of the few inalienable rights of the poor. The basic distinction between the "warly race" obsessed with respectability and those who respond to the gadflies of feeling appears in several other poems, especially the "Epistle" to William Logan (I, 300-302), which contains the poet's expression of sincere delight in womankind: "I like them dearly; / God bless them a'!" Obviously Burns does not assume that a man's love need be confined to one girl. In opposition to grave Calvinistic strictures condemning earthly joys, he cites scriptural (and therefore irrefutable) authority that Solomon, traditionally the wisest of men and devotee of infinite variety, "dearly lov'd the lasses." Carrying matters a step further in poems contributed to The Merry Muses of Caledonia, Burns is often very explicit, sometimes by means of clever metaphors, about the unsurpassed pleasures women afford sexually. Obversely, as lines from "To J. S" (I, 178-83) indicate, he characterizes the loss of physical love as the worst blight of senility, depriving man of his greatest joy.

Quite logically, a belief so devoutly affirmed had to be translated into practice, and many of Burns's poems celebrate the following of natural inclination—a precept he advocated most convincingly from the masculine viewpoint. Despite some admissions, as in the "Epistle to a Young Friend" (I, 248-51), that illicit affection hardened the heart and petrified the feelings, he usually assumed that the most ardent flames of love ought to be kindled immediately because they were too often of short duration. Hence he advised his brother William: "…try for intimacy as soon as you feel the first symptoms of the passion."¹³ Somewhat like his bard in "Love and Liberty" (I, 206), Burns usually regarded it a mortal sin to thwart divinely implanted instinct. Being a man entailed fulfilling the obligations of manhood, and whoever shirked them was not entitled to the name. In an attempt to refine a coarse original of his song "The Taylor" (II, 872-73), Burns implies this argument as explanation for the central character's behavior. Whereas in the earlier version the tailor sadistically took advantage of a sleeping maiden, in Burns's humorous redaction he attains his goal through ingratiating charm. (This alteration itself indicates how the poet frequently softened the harsh original without radically changing its import.) The profession of Burns's tailor provides him with nothing more than an entrée; his real vocation is that of a lover who "kend the way to woo." In one choice line the poet laconically sums up all that is indelicate in the earlier account, adds what is needed to conclude the anecdote, and comments on the action: "The Taylor prov'd a man O."

A much richer psychological treatment of this theme appears in the song "Had I the wyte" (II, 842-43). A man obviously disturbed by his recent excursion into adultery tries to allay his conscience by repeated questioning whether he ought to be blamed for his actions. Part of the humor no doubt stems from the transposition of customary roles in love—of an aggressive Lady Booby plotting the seduction of a relatively passive Joseph Andrews. But the crowning achievement in the lyric is the speaker's unwitting revelation of his own naïveté and his unwillingness to admit that the married woman had actually manipulated him. Knowing that he would not wish his valor impugned, she had shrewdly called him "a coward loon" for his reluctance to enter her house. Then perceiving his vanity and susceptibility to pity, she complained of how cruelly her absent husband treated her and thereby threw all the blame for her own actions upon a tyrannical spouse. What indeed could a sympathetic young man do but comfort and console her? In retrospect he protests:

After performing his duty, he reveals some uncertainty about true manly behavior by recounting that on the following morning he tried to drown his compunction in brandy, though he continues to solicit our comforting assurance that he was not the one to blame.

A somewhat different aspect of the problem is reflected in many of Burns's autobiographical poems that poignantly describe the suffering inflicted by conventional morality on natural deeds of love. The concept of vice as a virtue carried to excess was difficult for him to comprehend when the virtue was love and when others of his acquaintance seemingly enjoyed the pleasures without concomitant pains. Nevertheless, his overall attitude was remarkably consistent in that he not only followed masculine instinct but also assumed all the parental responsibilities that his encompassing affection and limited financial means could provide. The pathos tinged with humor in poems concerning his own difficulties with unplanned parenthood no doubt reveals his mixed reactions. Probably the best illustration occurs in "A Poet's Welcome to his love-begotten Daughter" (I, 99-100), which concedes his great delight upon first becoming an illegitimate father. Assuring his child by Elizabeth Paton that she is just as welcome as though she had been invited, he tenderly addresses her as "Sweet fruit o' monie a merry dint" (I, 100).

Not even the pains attendant on illegitimacy could diminish the swaggering bravado he assumes in a few of his poems celebrating propagation of bastards. One reason for such boasting on his part was undoubtedly the private masculine audience to whom such poems were initially addressed. Furthermore, his defiance of ecclesiastical authorities, who in some cases had been no better than he, for the penance and fine they imposed upon him could best be expressed with mocking raillery. Though in "A Poet's Welcome" he merely disclaims any objection to being called "fornicator," he boldly asserts his right to that distinction in "The Fornicator" (I, 101-102). That Burns sincerely believed he had been made to suffer excessively is clear from his repeated comparison of himself to Biblical "men of God," who achieved ultimate salvation despite rather cavalier attitudes toward the seventh commandment. King David and King Solomon, both famous as poets and adulterers, provided him with choice illustrations of sexual energy as the true manifestation of vitality. In "Robert Burns' Answer" (I, 278-80), a devil-may-care poem regarding his own ill repute, the poet argues that even though he may give women's "wames a random pouse," the manly sport of fornication should not call down great abuse from men who admire King David as one of the "lang syne saunts." Burns then concludes with a fanciful tale, the true index of his indignation, about how he made fools of the Kirk Session that assessed punishment for his transgression. According to this account, the defendant candidly admitted he would never be any better unless he were gelded; and the minister, perhaps on the analogy that an offending eye ought to be plucked out, immediately endorsed amputation of whatever proved to be a "sp'ritual foe." But instead Burns facetiously recommended putting the offending part under the guidance of the lass—a suggestion that pleased the Session "warst ava" and ended the interview.

The autobiographical poem that even the most devoted followers of Burns sometimes find difficult to justify is the "Epistle to J. R" (I, 61-63), with its elaborate metaphor of game-poaching. First must be remembered, however, the character of the individual for whose enjoyment it was originally intended. The opening lines of the "Epistle" characterize its recipient as "rough, rude, ready-witted R[ankine]," a man apparently well known for his rowdy festivities and exposés of hypocritical clergymen. Hence the principal anecdote was especially appropriate. Then too, the tradition of witty comparisons was so well established in Scottish vernacular poetry that Burns's analogy of poaching and promiscuous lovemaking would not have appeared so derogatory to the woman as it may seem today. As Burns put it,

'Twas ae night lately, in my fun,
I gaed a rovin wi' the gun,
An' brought a Paitrick to the grun'.
(I, 62)

Indeed many of Burns's poems employ metaphors, such as ploughing, threshing, playing the fiddle, filling the bowl, and shooting wild birds, that were common in the Scottish tradition long before he used them. Thus in the poem addressed to Rankine the implied comparison of his affair with Elizabeth Paton, the servant girl who bore his first child, to shooting down a partridge that did not rightfully belong to him and consequently having to pay a guinea's fine in the Poacher-Court (Kirk Session) ought to be regarded as a clever and natural treatment of the subject. If it reveals a sportive flippancy toward the begetting of bastards, it is nevertheless distinct from mere locker-room braggadocio. By connecting two of the most primitive survival drives in man—hunting for food and gratifying the sexual impulse—it atavistically reveals a basic masculine desire to make a sportive pleasure of necessity.

Nevertheless, Burns's depiction of young girls who have unwisely yielded to the rapture of love shows highly sympathetic insight, sometimes mixed with restrained masculine humor, into their various plights. Portraying them without ridicule or sentimentality, he accepts their condition as an unfortunate though natural consequence of love. The "sleepy bit lassie" in "The Taylor fell thro' the bed" (II, 509) naïvely thought the tailor could do her no harm, and indeed he gave her such satisfaction that now she longs for his return. Slightly graver complications have ensued for the girl in "To the Weaver's gin ye go" (I, 382–83), who laments the loss of her happiness for granting more than her heart to a weaver lad. Though reluctant to tell what occurred, she now fears that information will soon become increasingly obvious to everyone. But the subtlest and perhaps most appealing characterization of such a girl appears in the first set of lyrics entitled "Duncan Gray" (I, 393). Whereas her friends can still enjoy themselves, she now has the cares of unintentional motherhood, which she with half-hearted jocularity blames on the bad girthing. While she and Duncan were riding a horse on Lammas night, she recalls, the girthing broke, and one fall followed another. Now she wistfully hopes that Duncan will keep his oath so that all (including the bad girthing) may be rectified. Also from the feminine point of view, "The rantin dog the Daddie o't" (I, 184) expresses the anxieties of an unwed, expectant mother who seeks assurance that Rob, the rollicking father of her child, will assume his paternal obligations. Quite understandably she finds it difficult to joke about her very serious plight, and adding to the embarrassment is her realization that she has taken in earnest what had only been poked in fun.

Burns's songs about courtship are also rich in portraits of charming young girls who, tempering good humor with common sense, know what they want and cleverly overcome obstacles to their goals. An outstanding example is the lass in the song "O whistle, and I'll come to ye, my lad" (II, 700–701). Since there seems to be parental objection to her lover, she gives him explicit instructions on how to reach her without letting anyone else know. And though she wants him to ignore her publicly, she nevertheless insists that he is not to court another, even in jest, for fear he may accidentally be enticed away. In "Last May a braw wooer" (II, 795–96) a girl less in control of the situation pretends to be virtually inaccessible and, to her dismay, almost loses the young man to a rival. With cunning, however, she proceeds to win him back and reveals her dissembling nature even in her public reasons for marrying him—not for her own sake but, ironically, just "to preserve the poor body in life." Especially winsome is the maiden in "I'm o'er young to Marry Yet" (I, 384), who pleads with her suitor that at her tender age and as her mother's only child she is psychologically unprepared for marriage. But unwilling to reject his proposal completely, she suggests that should he come again next summer she will be older and perhaps ready to reconsider.

Timidity in men, on the other hand, is a topic rarely mentioned by Burns. Significantly, in his gallery of lovers the traditionally humorous bashful young men are almost nonexistent. He did, however, compose to the tune of "The Bashful Lover" lyrics entitled "On a bank of Flowers" (II, 514–15), portraying a lad who is shy only at first. Having chanced upon lightly clad Nelly asleep among summer flowers, Willie begins by merely gazing and wishing; but when she awakes and flees in terror, he presumably overcomes his initial hesitancy and overtakes her in the woods.

The most despicable variety of courtship in Burns's view was that which hypocritically aimed at marriage for money, and he was particularly scornful of men offering themselves as marketable commodities. "There's a youth in this City" (II, 525–26) pokes fun at a handsome, elegantly attired young man in search of a wealthy girl to marry. Several prospects with commendable fortunes are eager to have him, but actually he loves none of them so much as himself. A thoroughly cynical attitude toward the transience of feminine beauty is satirized in the song, "Hey for a lass wi' a tocher" (II, 808–9), in which a man extols woman's wealth as her only enduring attraction. Without denying the witchcraft of youthful beauty, he brazenly expresses his preference for a lass with "acres o' charms." Of course, shallow-hearted girls may also prefer silver to love. Meg o' the mill, in the second set of lyrics concerning her exploits (II, 689), foolishly jilts a desirable miller for a repulsive but rich laird. In all these instances, as in Burns's poems of social protest, wealth is deplored as a corrupting influence.

Comedy of a more playful sort is produced by refining the natural instinct of courtship into sophisticated skill—such as the fine art of seduction. In "Extempore—to Mr. Gavin Hamilton" (I, 236–37), a poem that strips the ornamental tinsel from many seemingly important matters and shows them as trivial, Burns relates how he applied the same technique to a female Whig. Her initial refusal to have faith in a poet, as well as his exalted reference to "Her whigship," arouses our antipathy toward a pretentious woman who deserves to be not only corrected but leveled. The poet's adroitness in the game of "love for love's sake" is so great that, despite her inevitable objections while they "grew lovingly big," he taught her "her terrors were naething." Burns concludes:

Whatever the consequences, seduction might be regarded as a challenging sport in which each of the two individuals, while abiding by the rules of the game, fulfills his prescribed part.

By transposing the customary roles of male and female, as Thurber has often done in our day, Burns provided another rich source of the comic, well exemplified in "Wha is that at my bower door" (II, 616–17). In the original song the woman is blatantly aggressive whereas the man is meekly compliant. In Burns's version, the woman, though less conniving, is still manipulator of the action and puts up only token resistance to letting her lover, Findlay, in. He, on the other hand, understands his obligations: he must argue until she deludes herself into thinking that, against her better judgment, his rhetoric has overwhelmed her. These pretenses are clear from the dialogue; the girl introduces in conditional clauses exactly what she ought to fear while Findlay counters with his assurance that each condition will be fulfilled. When he promises to abide by her last stipulation—never to tell what may transpire in her bower—there is no longer any need for him to remain outside.

Burns was also interested in burlesquing artificial conventions of courtship in his second set of lyrics entitled "Duncan Gray" (II, 666–68). When he sent the words of this song to George Thomson, he observed that the melody "precludes sentiment" and that "the ludicrous is its ruling feature."¹⁴ Both Meg, with the proud disdain of a courtly lady, and Duncan, with his lachrymose despair verging on suicide, so overplay their roles that they achieve the comic of exaggeration. Excessive sentimentality in Duncan, however, produces its own reaction, for he banishes affectation by realizing the absurdity of dying for "a haughty hizzie." As he recovers his health, Meg, discovering how much his love had meant to her, grows ill pining for him. The fact that Duncan is "a lad o' grace," as well as a shrewd psychologist trained in Scottish common-sense philosophy, permits all to turn out well. Pitying Meg, who suffers as he himself once languished, he demonstrates his true worth by magnanimously refusing to cause her death. The guarded manner in which he accepts her indicates he has learned a very practical lesson in amatory psychology: nothing is quite so attractive as casual indifference.

Perhaps because of the limited range of possibilities inherent in the subject, Burns rarely approached the comical aspects of married love with the geniality and compassion required of true humor. In writing of domestic situations, he easily turned from humor to satire, and it should not be surprising that the preponderance of marriage poems are, by their very nature, sharply succinct and often epigrammatic. This antipathy toward the marital state, revealed with varying degrees of aggressiveness in the majority of his poems treating comic love, is exactly what one should expect. According to Freud's analysis, no institution in our society has been more carefully guarded by accepted morality or more vulnerable to attack than the connubial relationship.¹⁵ The prevalence of cynical jokes deriding wedlock as bedlock illustrates the unconscious antagonism which men in particular feel toward rigid suppresion of sexual liberty. Since this hostility can be temporarily freed from the unconscious by means of some clever witticism—a "pleasure premium," that enables us to laugh at what we revere—tendentious wit aimed at marriage momentarily overcomes whatever inhibitive power exists and permits us to enjoy a release of aggression, often quite contrary to what our sober thoughts might recommend. Burns's practice would indeed tend to support Freud's theory. Regarding marriage as a mixed blessing, he was not able, as he admits in "Yestreen I had a pint o' wine" (II, 555–56), to resign himself wholeheartedly to its restraints. Yet his ability to identify imaginatively with either opponent in marital warfare not only relieved him of acerbity but permitted him, usually with the verbal economy of an excellent reconteur, to turn even the worst situation into a good joke.

One group of his poems about marriage emphasizes the change which a husband feels has occurred in his wife since their wedding. Stanza vi of "Extempore—to Mr. Gavin Hamilton" (I, 236) cogently points out how during courtship the lover sparkles and glows when "Approaching his bonie bit gay thing," but after the irrevocable ceremony he learns he has acquired a dressed-up "naething." The unfortunate man in "O ay my wife she dang me" (II, 881–82) has suffered considerably; yet there is something admirably winning about his resignation to fate. Though the peace and rest he anticipated in marriage were never realized, at least he has the consolation of knowing that, after enduring "pains o' hell" on earth, he is assured of bliss above. The husband in the justly admired "Whistle o'er the lave o't" (I, 434–35) has also had his hopes shattered, but through an amazing humor born of torment he seems to be chuckling while cataloguing his woes. All that he had associated with Maggie before the wedding has now changed to its antithesis, and but for fear Maggie would find out, he would even name the one he wishes were in her grave. Implying far more than he expresses, he refrains from elaborating on each unpleasantness and turns it into jest by whistling about what cannot be altered. No doubt the evasive and suggestive quality that makes him a fascinating conversationalist also renders him a most exasperating husband to a shrew.

A considerable number of marriage poems are concerned less with mutability than with exposing and ridiculing an intolerable wife. In so doing, they also reveal the curious relationships between the shortcomings of one spouse and the weaknesses of the other. For example, in "The Henpeck'd Husband" (II, 909) Burns expresses the belief that a vixen is partially the fault of a spineless, fearful husband who deserves reproach rather than pity. The anomalous situation would never occur if the husband of such a woman wisely subdued her by breaking either her spirit or her heart. The efficacy of such action is demonstrated in "My Wife's a wanton, wee thing" (II, 512), in which the man expresses doubt concerning his licentious wife's ability to behave unless she is controlled as a child ought to be ruled—namely, by the rod. Perhaps the only suffering husband who genuinely elicits our pity, however, is the one in "Kellyburnbraes" (II, 644–46). There the unfortunate man yields his termagant wife to the devil, who thereupon discovers her to be more than a match for him and his demons. Upon returning the shrew to earth, the devil admits that he had never been truly in hell until he acquired a wife.

Among several poems that disparage the husband without particularly ennobling the wife, some make light of the essentially serious affliction of impotence in advanced age. The young woman in "What can a young lassie" (II, 607–8) temporarily evokes our sympathy with complaints about her peevish, jealous old husband until she reveals her plan to torment him to death and then use his "auld brass" to buy herself a "new pan." The subject receives an almost poignant treatment in "The deuk's dang o'er my daddie" (II, 652–53), where acrid hostility between the lusty wife and her incapable spouse is mixed with remembrance of happier bygone days and nights. Two of Burns's songs deal with an equally old marital jest, cuckoldry, but they do so in a manner characteristic of his humor. The women of "O an ye were dead Gudeman" (II, 835) and "We'll hide the Couper" (II, 848–49) are openly and defiantly committing adultery with their lovers while their husbands do nothing but resign themselves to their proverbial horns. Though some compassion is naturally directed toward the poor, helpless cuckolds, the comic pleasure derived from these two lyrics stems less from a debasement of the husbands than from our fascination with the hussies' brazen determination to satisfy their desires.

Burns could hardly write of love without relating it humorously to another of his chief delights, John Barleycorn, which he recognized as a true, though unscrupulous, liberator of psychic energy. In some instances alcohol could demean its imbiber to such a ludicrous state that he became excellent material for mordantly satirical, aggressive comedy. Especially when associated with Calvinistic moral attitudes, as in "Holy Willie's Prayer" (I, 74–78), tippling served to accentuate what Burns considered the irreconcilability of canon law with man's instinctive nature. Willie's anthropomorphic concept of God—capriciously unjust, vindictive, and incapable of love—reveals the speaker himself. Since his sexual drive is wholly identified with proscribed pleasure, what Burns would have called human love can never be anything but lust in Willie Fisher, who ironically justifies his own promiscuity by pleading drunkenness. Also in "The Holy Fair" (I, 128–37) a perversion of what ought to be the celebration of divine love in a communion service is allied with alcohol and lechery. Superstition and hypocrisy in the preaching tent combined with careless fun in an adjacent tavern justify the poet's attack on the Scottish Kirk—a corruption of faith that ideally should be characterized by good deeds, sincerity, and love. Hence he comments ironically on the man who, by letting his hand wander over the bosom of his lass during a sermon, makes a mockery of both religion and human love. As the scene moves to the tavern, he portrays a predominant mood of lechery whereby liquor alters Venus Uranus into a lusty pandemic lass. Thus what began with a hardhearted religion leads, through the stimulation of drink, to a parody of love—"houghmagandic."

With less satire and far greater humor, Burns treats the bibulous freeing of emotion more sympathetically in "Tam o' Shanter" (II, 557–64). Just as good Scotch drink presumably released Burns's thoughts and feelings for poetical composition, so too it heightens Tarn's amiability toward both Souter Johnie and the landlady, causing him to postpone his return to a hostile, sullen wife. Unfortunately it later contributes to his admiration for an attractive witch dancing lustily in a sark so short that it barely covers, and as a result Tam is momentarily deprived of rational control. Quite unconsciously he roars out the ingenuous praise that almost undoes him. With mock-serious didacticism, Burns in the conclusion warns that the path leading from alcohol to lecherous contemplation often culminates in disaster. The negative moral lesson is, of course, a variant of the admonition in a classic naughty story pertinent to mice and ardent men. Because Tam loses his head to drink and a "cutty sark," his mare is bereft of her tail.

An entirely different attitude toward the combination of love and alcohol is found in "Love and Liberty" (I, 195–209), often published as "The Jolly Beggars." Its characters, who have a simple, intuitively acute perception of man's nature, possess no inhibitions whatever and accept the basic instincts without any concern for what is ordinarily called ethical standards. What might in polite society be condemned as obscene is from their point of view perfectly normal. Indeed the comedy of this cantata, which is universally considered Burns's masterpiece, verges on what Freud analyzed as the naïvely comical—the effect often produced in adult listeners by the spontaneous, forthright comments of children.¹⁶ The poet's sympathy with (and at times even undisguised envy of) a segment of humanity usually thought beneath contempt is just as sincere as the beggars' irrepressible and appealing candor. Had these uninhibited outcasts been deliberately attacking institutions of the society they rejected, then some of their satirical jibes might be considered tendentious wit: the reader would have to assume that through enticement of comic pleasure they were trying to elicit his hostility against principles which he had been conditioned to respect unquestioningly, despite an unconscious dislike.¹⁷ There are indeed occasional touches of such wit in their oblique comments on marriage, respectability, legality, and religion, particularly in the Merry Andrew's song and the final chorus; yet these bits of aggression are casually tossed off at inhabitants of a world having little contact with theirs. The supremely winning quality of the beggars is their belief in both love and liberty not in the negative sense of revolt against restraint but rather as positive virtues. The old soldier and his doxy, both of whom enjoy their present indulgence in love and drink rather than the exploits of their former military careers; the professional Merry Andrew who admits to being a fool; the female pickpocket whose Highland lover died on the gallows for defiance of Lowland laws; the small fiddler who proposes cohabitation with the pickpocket; the bold tinker who offers himself to the same "unblushing fair"; the bard who, resigning himself to the loss of one mistress because he has two others left, sings in praise of free love and freely flowing drink—all reveal in an unsophisticated way their refusal to be duped by the hypocritical cant of society.

There is something wonderfully refreshing, as Burns himself acknowledged in his commonplace book, about associating with such people.¹⁸ Though their actual deeds may be no better than those of respectable friends, the beggars' mental attitude is more appealing because of its unpretentious honesty. They spontaneously express by both precept and example what all of us know intuitively but have been taught to renounce. The occasional intrusion of artificial diction on their vernacular, to which many critics have objected, subtly reminds us of conventional society's attempt to veneer their basic propensities; yet the beggars remain essentially loyal to all that is natural in humanity. They have indeed achieved the "happy state" described in one of Burns's favorite quotations: " … when souls each other draw, / When love is liberty, and nature law" (Pope's "Eloïsa to Abelard," 11. 91–92).¹⁹ Especially when we compare the beggars' adherence to their own code of behavior with the contrasting failure of society to abide by its ethical standards, we realize the supreme humor with which the poet conceived his work.

There were inevitably nineteenth-century critics who let Burns's personal frailties and artistic improprieties prejudice their estimates of his achievement. Yet among the most objectively perceptive, his extraordinary ability to fuse the seemingly heterogeneous elements of love and comedy by means of uniquely incisive humor did not go wholly unnoticed. Lamb, who was quick to recognize in Burns some qualities he himself possessed, observed "a jocular pathos, which makes one feel in laughter."²⁰ After reading a collection of Burns's unpublished letters, Byron remarked: "What an antithetical mind!—tenderness, roughness—delicacy, coarseness—sentiment, sensuality—soaring and grovelling, dirt and deity—all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay!"²¹ Carlyle, equally aware of these para doxes, especially stressed "the tenderness, the playful pathos" and perceived that the principle of love which characterized Burns's poetry "occasionally manifests itself in the shape of Humour."²² Aside from the drollery associated with caricature, Carlyle claimed for Burns "in his sunny moods, a full buoyant flood of mirth" related to his ability to be a "brother and often playmate to all Nature." To emphasize this extraordinary ability Carlyle especially cited those poems expressing a fellow feeling with animals, presumably because mice, mares, and sheep would seem the most difficult creatures with whom a love poet could imaginatively identify himself. And while some genteel critics regarded his subject matter as crudely unpoetical, Matthew Arnold thought Burns had provided a genuine criticism of life, ironic though it was.²³ Despite a revulsion from "Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners," Arnold stressed the "overwhelming sense of the pathos of things" and singled out for illustration of particular merit those works he especially admired. Strangely enough, all that he selected dealt humorously with love. If such poems lacked the requisite high seriousness that excluded their author from the Victorian Valhalla of poetical heroism, it was because Burns (like Chaucer, with whom Arnold repeatedly compared him) believed that many serious observations on life could be uttered more effectively in jest than in grave solemnity.

Notes

¹ Stuart M. Tave's The Amiable Humorist (Chicago, 1960), which surveys comic theory of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, clearly demonstrates what meager attention Romantic critics paid to Burns's humorous treatment of love.

² "On Wit and Humour" (1818), The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P. P. Howe (London, 1930–34), VI, 15.

³ "John Paul Frederick Richter" (1821), The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, ed. David Masson (Edinburgh, 1889–90), XI, 270.

⁴ "Jean Paul Friedrich Richter" (1827), The Works of Thomas Carlyle, ed. H. D. Traill (London, 1896–99), XXVI, 17.

⁵ "On the Genius and Character of Hogarth" (1811), The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas (London, 1903–1905), I, 86.

⁶The Letters of John Keats, ed. Hyder E. Rollins (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), I, 193. Subsequent references to Keats's letters appear in the text.

⁷Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, tr. and ed. James Strachey (London, 1953–64), VIII, 232.

⁸ In addition to several references to Beattie's poems, he alludes to the "Essay on Truth" in "The Vision" (ll. 171–74) and was presumably acquainted with the "Essay on Poetry and Music" (The Letters of Robert Burns, ed. J. DeLancey Ferguson [Oxford, 1931], II, 148). Since the "Essay on Laughter" was often printed with Beattie's other essays, Burns probably knew it.

⁹Essays (London, 1779), p. 438.

¹⁰Essays, pp. 301–305, 380–83.

¹¹Letters, I, 108.

¹²The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, ed. James Kinsley (Oxford, 1968), I, 59–60. All subsequent references to Burns's poetry cite volume and page of this edition.

¹³Letters, I, 332.

¹⁴Letters, II, 135.

¹⁵Jokes, p. 110.

¹⁶Jokes, pp. 182–88.

¹⁷Jokes, pp. 90–119.

¹⁸Robert Burns's Commonplace Book 1783–1785, ed. James C. Ewing and D. Cook (Glasgow, 1938), pp. 7–8.

¹⁹ See Letters, I, 8; II, 271. Cf. also Pope's Essay on Man, III, 207–8.

²⁰ Letter of 20 March 1799 to Southey, The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas (London, 1935), I, 152.

²¹ Journal entry for 13 December 1813, The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, ed. Rowland E. Prothero (London, 1898–1901), II, 376–77—hereafter cited as LJ.

²² "Burns" (1828), Works, XXVI, 283.

²³ "The Study of Poetry" (1880), The Works of Matthew Arnold (London, 1903–1904), IV, 32–40.