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The Radical Tradition of Robert Burns
In particular through his book on the 'lost poems' (1), the independent Burns scholar Patrick Scott Hogg has done a great deal to demolish the myth that at the end of his life Burns had become just another disillusioned ex-radical. Patrick is also joint editor of the recently published The Canongate Burns (2), which has irked certain sections of the 'Burns establishment'. The following article is the text of a paper given by him at the Burns Now Conference at the University of Strathclyde on January 18, 2002.
For anyone new to this rather so-called scholarly debate, it began in late 1995 when a "nobody from nowhere" sought the views of eminent literary experts about the possibility that Burns wrote some hitherto unknown radical poems during his last few years in Dumfries. A wall of derision reared itself in the shape of Dr James Mackay, who roared Mons-Meg-like from the walls of authority that Burns did not write anything radical or controversial during his last years. He went on to add that the bard knew his place and was a good loyalist boy who recanted his political principles during these fraught years, donning the uniform of the Dumfries Volunteers as a jolly loyal Pittite.
Of course every school kid knows this is tripe. Were it true we would need to find another author for the then highly seditious pro-democracy song A Man's A Man, published anonymously in the Glasgow Magazine of late 1795, and we would need to ascribe the Ode for General Washington's Birthday, The Heron Ballads, and so on, to another author. That is the logic of Mackay's view, although he contradicts this notion by accepting into the canon in his Alloway edition of the poems The Tree of Liberty, a radical song written after the execution of the French King during late January 1793.
THE 'LOST POEMS'
It seems to have been collectively forgotten, given recent press remarks, that Professor David Daiches, in July 1997, went on STV news to endorse around ten of the so-called lost poems and said:
"Burns kept his promise to send radical prose and poetry to leading radical newspapers … he could not use his own name … that is why they have remained anonymous until Scott Hogg found them"
In the early Spring of 1997, the eminent literary scholar Professor Carol McGuirk remarked in a book review for Eighteenth Century Scotland (edited by Richard Sher):
"Hogg has found poems which have eluded prior searches … he deserves to feel as proud as Haley or Bopp. Had either of them found their comet by the naked eye and been tarred and feathered for doing so, the analogy would be closer still".
Thomas Crawford, one of the most eminent 20th century scholars, listed nine of the new radical poems he believed were by Burns in the original lost poems book. So, a jury of highly eminent literary scholars sat in judgement of the provisionally ascribed poems. That they accepted any of them at all was, surely, a fantastic success for all Burnsians to celebrate. The corollary of this of course is that a few out of 15 poems in the A list of the book were automatically rejected as not by Burns and the B list was simply swept away (3). After the judgement of these major scholars, the remaining poems rejected in the A section of The Lost Poems and those in the B section were pretty much irrelevant to the ongoing debate.
Enhancing the earlier argument, it was found later in 1997 that the eminent American Professor, Lucylle Werkmeister, had ascribed three of the same poems to Burns in a little known article Robert Burns and the London Daily Press, published in 1966. Mackay's unscholarly wholesale dismissal of all the new radical poems, even before he even saw what they were, claiming they had been seen before and rejected, is a view that has never been supported by one shred of evidence.
BURNS AND GEDDES
Who might have written the other rejected poems is of course of some interest, but it was an issue of no great importance. That is why over a year later I was one of the first to congratulate a minor literary scholar I then worked with at Strathclyde who rightly pinpointed Dr Alexander Geddes as author of one of the rejected poems in the A list and one in the B list. This scholar, Gerard Carruthers, even agreed in the Celtic connections debate of 1999 that in his view, at least six of the new radical poems were from Burns. Indeed, in a personal letter he remarked that it was probably Dr Alexander Geddes who took the other radical Burns poems to London for publication in the anti-Pitt newspaper the Morning Chronicle. The retrieval of the canon of work by Geddes is itself further proof of the radical counter-culture which existed during the late 18th century. It was obvious that the anonymous Geddes poems were the work of a major radical Scottish voice who had never received proper scrutiny. I also pointed out over two years ago that a couple of the other rejected B list poems were by Anna Barbauld and one of the sonnets signed One of the People is ascribed to Samuel T Coleridge in the Oxford Coleridge. Whether that sonnet is truly the work of Coleridge or not is still open to debate. As an aside, Burns enthusiasts might find it interesting that a significant part of Burns's poem To Robert Graham of Fintry was copied out by Coleridge in a letter to a friend and was eventually ascribed to STC in the late 19th century. It is still in the Oxford Coleridge as an early fragment, but it is taken from Burns.
Things have moved on considerably since 1997 and my archival work has thrown up many new factors relating to Burns's last years. For instance, an early variant edition of the Ode for General Washington's Birthday has come to light, which features in a manuscript sale of 1862 in London, in which Hibernia is substituted for Columbia - that is, the subject matter dealt with is Ireland's political turmoil and not America. That Burns was supportive of the Irish radicals at this time may not sit well with some modern Burnsians, but facts are chiels that wanna ding. This was a massive sale from the original Currie family archive. Facts also show there were originally eight stanzas to the poem Ye True Loyal Natives.
Revealing more of the censorial scissors at work, we now know that Burns wrote in the Interleaved SMM what was probably a satirical poem titled The Lucubrations of Henry Dundass, May 1792. This is known because the title of the piece exists, although the remainder of the page has been cut away. Moreover, Burns re-published the body text of A Winter's Night in 1794 under the new title Humanity: An Ode in the Gentleman's Magazine, stripped of the artificial Scots stanza introduction and ending. This is included as a separate poem in The Canongate Burns for the precise reason that Burns himself updated it and re-published under his initials. I also found an epitaph On The Late Death of Dr Adam Smith, also in the Gentleman's Magazine, signed under the pen name Agricola, a pen name Burns used the year previous for his Ode on the departed Regency Bill when he published that in Stuart's London Star newspaper. I could not find another example of this pen name in ten years of newspaper scrutiny.
GOVERNMENT AGENTS
There is also archival evidence to show that Robert Heron, the poet's first biographer, was a paid government agent who acted under the guidance of Henry MacKenzie, to attack radical activists during the early 1790's. MacKenzie himself played a major part in the anti-radical state propaganda against radicals under the pen names Brutus and An Old Tradesman. Furthermore, having examined Scottish Record Office papers, we discovered there was in fact a Dumfries branch of the pro-democracy Friends of the People and can pinpoint that the delegate from Dumfries to the National Convention of the Friends of the People was the young unemployed bank clerk Burns knew and wrote to Mrs Dunlop about, John Drummond. In addition, new research has pinpointed that a large extract of a known Burns Letter to Peter Hill was published anonymously in the Glasgow Advertiser of April 1791 under the heading On Poverty. Furthermore, there is documented evidence that the so-called patron and friend of Burns, Robert Graham of Fintry, received payments from the anti-democratic government spy network in 1793, which surely casts a dark shadow over this long established friendship.
The new Canongate Burns also prints a genuine manuscript based letter by Burns on Robert the Bruce, relating to the song Robert Bruce's Address to His Troops at Bannockburn (Scots Whae Hae), sent to a Dr Hughes. Why this is omitted from the complete letters is a mystery, as it is widely known about in Burns circles. Recent research has also unearthed a letter signed under the known Burns pen name A Briton which appears in the Morning Chronicle on January 1, 1795, which is arguably, the final public statement by Burns on the state of British affairs at that time, with compelling contextual evidence that has already convinced most scholars who have read the essay. This is probably the most important archival evidence in the new Canongate Burns. Also new, but readily found within the poet's own volume of letters, is an epigram which editors of the letters seem to have missed: here is Burns's introduction to it. (The letter is addressed to William Smellie):
"I have a strong fancy that in some future eccentric planet, the Comet of some happier System than any in which Astronomy is acquainted, you and I, among the harum-scarum sons of Imagination and Whim, shall recognise OLD ACQUAINTENCE
Where Wit may sparkle all its rays, Uncurst with caution's fears; And Pleasure, basking in the blaze, Rejoice for endless years."
There are no quotation marks to indicate these lines are by another author than Burns. The letter appeared in 1835 and they are in the poet's hand. It is surely the case that they are from Burns himself.
MYTHOLOGY STRIPPED AWAY
All of this new research strips away the mythology about Burns and re-contextualises him within his own period as a passionate radical poet, caught up in the reform movement of the era, between the optimism of the American Revolution and the eventual pessimism of the French Revolution. Burns as a result turns out to be a much more complex radical poet, comparable to Shelley and Blake.
Scholarly integrity, though, in Scotland, is now in disgrace and an affront to the very name of Robert Burns. The initial response to the new radical poems and the overall conclusions in The Canongate Burns were of course bound to be a deep irritation to Dr James Mackay who is fingered in the book as a plagiarist on two separate counts: his biography on Burns and his Alloway edition of the poems of Burns are both marred by his habitual dishonest flair for stealing the intellectual property of others. The former lifts chunks of texts directly from the 1896 Chambers-Wallace edition and the latter blatantly copies the notes of the Oxford 1968 edition edited by Professor James Kinsley.
Mackay, who was honoured with a Doctorate by the University of Glasgow for his so-called research into Burns, will of course have the last laugh, rubbing his hands all the way to the bank. However, when all the facts of his plagiarism eventually come out, there will be egg on the faces of all who have helped to rehabilitate the man described by Professor Robert Bruce as "the Parrot Laureate of Western Scotland". While truly a joke, it was Professor Bruce whose complaint led the American Historical Association (a powerful institution) to pulp copies of Mackay's (that should read Professor Bruce's) biography on Alexander Graham Bell. Rumours are that now, it must be after plagiarising at least six books, the World Wide Federation are proud to be associated with Dr James Mackay, who still wears the bard's cloak of fame, as the greatest authority in Burns in the world. When the University of Glasgow eventually strip him of the Doctorate he never deserved, the stain of shame may eventually be lifted from the name of Robert Burns, a truly radical poet.
Notes
(1)Robert Burns: The Lost Poems, by Patrick Scott Hogg, Clydeside Press, 1997.
(2)The Canongate Burns, edited and introduced by Andrew Noble and Patrick Scott Hogg, Canongate, 2000.
(3) In Robert Burns:The Lost Poems, the A list comprises poems provisionally attributed to Burns and the B list others which are possibly by him.