Punch (7.1844)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

THE BURNS' FESTIVAL.—" REPENTANT" SCOTLAND.

August G, Banks of the Doon.

She had

'TO-DAY, Scotland did penance for past coldness of heart, and avarice of pocket
degraded her poet into an exciseman ; she had snatched Bobert Burns

from the sickle and the plough,

£5r

v

To gauge ale-firkins,"

and finally saw him on his death-hed agonised by a most trumpery debt, without once drawing

her purse-strings.— Well, to-day ~X^ij^^^> XY~^V

" Caledonia stern and wild, ^K^tTlIC Y^'

Meet nurse for a poetic child," ^"EfeL^^y^— vr

(albeit her nursing of the Ayrshire ploughman was very much after the fashion of
Brownrigg)—to-day, repentant Caledonia confessed her sins of
neglect and selfishness, and by the Banks of Doon, supplicated for-
giveness of the ghost of Robert Burns. And was her penitence
genuine ? Did she really feel the birth of gratitude to the sublimating
spirit of Poetry ? And if another Burns—yea, or a lesser genius—
were to manifest himself, would she honour him living, or would
she again suffer him to be—

" Oppressed with grief, oppressed with care
a burden more than he could bear?"

And after he had passed awav some

would she then rend her
garments and cast ashes
on her head, and wail and
wring her hands in most theatrical remorse for
the callousness of her neglect ? "Well, it is a
hard question ; we cannot satisfactorily answer
it; but we beg to refer the curious to Thom,
the living poet of Inverary. He, doubtless,
can give testimony of the tenderness of Scot-
land ; can show the sincerity of her repentance
for past omissions, by the activity of her sympathies towards
present suffering. For, of course, Scotland would hardly play the
hypocrite to the Shade of Burns, whilst Thom—a man of exquisite
powers—was ground to the earth by the tyranny of want. No,
no ; Scotland on this sixth of August, comes, a true penitent, to the
Banks of Doon, and she has therefore first visited the poet of
Inverary with sympathising gladness.

Punch—he says it with all manly modesty—has ever been dis-
tinguished for the exclusiveness of his intelligence. "Whenever lie
has condescended to chronicle the events of the times, he has
generally contrived to enrich his narrative with incidents which
have altogether escaped the attention of his soberer contempo-
raries ; nay, he has often reported circumstances wholly unknown
to the actors thereof. Nevertheless, by so doing, he has endea-
voured to deliver himself in the true spirit—if truly developed—