Robert Fergusson

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Robert Fergusson

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In the following excerpt, MacArthur briefly discusses Fergusson's strengths and weaknesses as a poet and compares his work with that of Robert Burns.
SOURCE: "Robert Fergusson," in Realism and Romance and Other Essays, 1897. Reprint by Kennikat Press, 1970, pp. 204-25.

In our estimate of Fergusson's poetry his English pieces do not count. 'These English songs,' said Burns, 'gravel me to death,' and it is easy to imagine Fergusson saying the same thing.

That is a measure of Fergusson's English performance; and for most people it will be quite enough. Clearly, had Fergusson written always in this fashion, one would not be talking of him at this time of day. Indeed, if there is one thing more than another specially noticeable in Fergusson, it is the rich feast of the Doric which in every one of his best poems he sets before us. Such phrases as 'gust your gab' and 'weet your thrapple' ought to be dear to the heart of every patriotic Scot, and of such phrases Fergusson is full. Not Burns himself has a greater command over the resources of our kindly Scots tongue. If we valued our poets in proportion to the difficulty which the base Southron finds in reading their works, then would Fergusson be elevated far above Burns. Without going quite so far as that, one has a certain malicious satisfaction in trying to guess what one who has the misfortune not to be a Scotsman would make of this address "To the Tron-Kirk Bell":—

This familiar way of treating the august personage referred to is, I think, very characteristic of our Scots poets. And the reason seems clear. It is not hard to hate the Devil, but, in spite of yourself, you cannot but have a friendly, neighbourly sort of feeling for one whom you call, familiarly, the Deil.

Fergusson has been called the Laureate of Old Edinburgh, and the title is richly deserved. There he had been born, there he spent most of his life, and he came, as most do, to love the old grey city right well. With his quick eye and his true descriptive power he contrives to give us, in a wonderfully vivid fashion, an idea of what life in the chief of Scottish cities was like in the last years of the eighteenth century. "Auld Reekie," "The Daft Days," "The King's Birthday," "The Election," "Caller Oysters," "Leith Races"—how picturesquely these bring before us the old, quaint town, with all the bustle and humours of the streets, the dirt, the smells, the merry din of the change-houses, and the drunkenness, the cheerful, the deliberate drunkenness, of its douce citizens.

Here, then, lay Fergusson's strength, in describing in his quietly humorous and satirical fashion the city scenes he knew so well, and had joined in so often. He was not without a feeling for Nature, of course—witness the idyllic close of that rollicking poem, "The King's Birthday,"—but he had been born among the high lands of Edinburgh, and it was of Edinburgh that he wrote best. Dealing with such themes as the street scenes suggested, his verse naturally lacked dignity and elevation, but at least—and this was much—it was true to life; he described only what he saw, always he wrote 'with his eye on the object.'

Fergusson had neither the fire nor the pathos of Burns; love had not come to him as it came to Burns, causing spontaneous bursts of song. His experience was not mature; seriousness, that deep and true view of life which only the progress of the years can bring, was wanting; dying at twenty-four, how could it have been otherwise? But through all his best poems there runs a tone of genuine humour and sarcasm, always pleasant and sometimes pungent. Thus he sings satirically the praises of "Gude Braid Claith":

Let me conclude my quotations with one which shows how sweet a strain Fergusson was master of once in a while. It occurs in the "Elegy on the Death of Scots Music." He complains, a hundred years before Professor Blackie, of the neglect of our national airs, and asks—

What Fergusson might have achieved had he lived it is idle to speculate. He died, insane, at twenty-four; but already his work was done. In his habit of dealing directly with the subjects that lay nearest to his hand—dealing with them faithfully and freely in the homely tongue he so well knew how to use,—in this habit he had shown the way to Burns, he had marked out the path which he who had the good fortune to come after was to tread with a firmer, a more assured step. He is thus linked with that great movement in English poetry of which Wordsworth was—not so much the originator as—the first wholly conscious exponent….

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