Part 8

A traveller, familiar with the low grounds of England, when he first enters the northern lowlands is at once impressed by their much more limited extent. He finds them to occupy comparatively restricted spaces between uplands and highlands, their largest expanse lying in the broad depression between the southern border of the Highland mountains and the great tract of high pastoral land in the southern counties. Another considerable area of them intervenes between these southern uplands and the flanks of the Cheviot Hills. A further contrast to the English type is to be seen in the broken character of the surface. There are no extensive level flats like those of the English midlands, nor any continuous bands of gentle ridge like those of the English downs. The ground is separated into detached districts by ranges of hills, which sometimes even become sufficiently high and broad to deserve the name of uplands. A third characteristic arises from the great diversity of geological structure, and especially the intercalation of abundant volcanic rocks among the other formations. As a consequence of this intermingling of hard and durable materials with others more easily abraded, the topography is diversified by endless crags and hills rising picturesquely out of the surrounding lower country, and often crowned with ancient castles or ruined peels.

Such a disposition of the elements of the landscape is accompanied with a much greater diversity in the mantle of vegetation than is seen among the English lowlands. The surrounding uplands and hills, for the most part bare of trees, are clothed with pasture, save where they support a covering of heathy herbage or dark peat-moss. The lower grounds have in large measure been brought under cultivation, but still retain tracts of moorland, haunted by lapwing and curlew. Though the ancient natural wood has mostly disappeared, hard-wood trees are now abundant, while sombre plantations of fir give a northern character to the landscapes.

But perhaps the feature in these Scottish lowlands which more particularly deserves notice here, is the contrast to be found between their streams and those of south-eastern England. Owing to the uneven forms and steeper slopes of the ground, the drainage runs off rapidly to the sea. The brooks are full of motion, as they tumble over waterfalls, plunge through rocky ravines, and sweep round the boulders that cumber their channels. They furnish, moreover, countless dells and dingles where the native copsewoods find their surest shelter. There the gorse and the sloe come earliest into bloom, and the wild flowers linger longest. There too the birds make their chief home. These strips of wild nature, winding through cultivated field or bare moor, from the hills to the sea, offer in summer scenes of perfect repose. But they furnish too, from time to time, pictures of tumult and uproar, when rain-clouds have burst upon the uplands, and the streams come down in heavy flood, pouring through the glens with a din that can be heard from far.

Brooks and rivers have always had a fascination for poets. Their banks supply secluded spots for reverie and communion with nature. Under their shade and shelter, bird and blossom and flower are guarded from the blasts around, while the sparkle and murmur of their waters give a sense of life and companionship even in the depths of solitude. Constant familiarity with such a type of stream as that of the Scottish lowlands can hardly fail to strike the imagination in a different way from that which has attended the slow-creeping and silent brooks of the south-east of England. The Scottish poets, even in the earlier centuries, show traces of the influence of their more rugged surroundings; but not till the eighteenth century did this influence manifest itself in such a manner as to affect the general flow of English literature.

Of the two Scottish lowland poets whom we have now to notice, James Thomson was considerably the earlier. He was born in Roxburghshire in 1700, within hearing of the ripple of the Tweed, within sight of the Cheviot and Lammermuir Hills, and in a region famous in Border ballad and song. To the east the uplands of the Cheviot Hills rise as a blue ridge, high enough to come often within the clouds, to catch the first snows of autumn, and to keep them unmelted in northern rifts until the spring. From these long, bare undulating uplands a number of streams descend northwards into the Tweed, each having its own dale, with its own ridge of moors on either hand, and its meadows and cornfields along the bottom. The slope of the ground gives these descending waters such an impetus as sends them dashing over rocky channels, here and there cutting a scaur or ravine, murmuring over gravelly bottoms, winding through flat haughs, and finally finding their way into the Tweed. The watercourses are thus in themselves full of variety and life, and their charms are enhanced by the alternation of meadow and field, coppice, ferny brake and woodland, through which they wander. Nor are occasional bolder features wanting to enliven these quiet valleys. Here and there knobs of volcanic material rise along the crests of the ridges into prominent hills, which are conspicuous landmarks all over the Border country. Since Thomson's day the plough has no doubt crept further up the hill sides; more wood has been planted and more ground has been enclosed. But there is still plenty of bare moor and peat-moss, and the pastoral character of the district yet remains. The traditions of Border warfare have grown fainter, but the ruined peel-towers still stand as picturesque relics of the old wild times. The climate, too, has not changed. The winter storms still send down the rivers in full flood, and bury the vales in deep snow; the spring whitens the meadows and hedgerows with flower and blossom, and the short summer gives way to an early autumn.

Such was the scenery that inspired the 'sweet poet of the year,' as Burns called him. Thomson came to London in 1725, when he was twenty-five years of age, and the following year he published his Winter. The poem, though written at Barnet, took its inspiration from the Border. The verse was turgid, full of latinisms, and sadly lacking in the simplicity and directness which the subject required. Nevertheless these defects could not conceal the genuine poetic gift of the writer, and the poem immediately became popular, for notwithstanding its artificial style, it took the reader at once into the sanctuaries of nature, from which the poetry of the previous hundred years had been exiled. It awakened a general interest in features of landscape never before described so fully or so well in English verse. It painted changes of the sky--tempest, rain-clouds and snow-storms, and it brought the gloom of a northern winter vividly before the imagination of dwellers in a more southerly clime.

Thomson told the world how in his youth,

'Nursed by careless solitude he lived And sang of nature with unceasing joy,'

and how, with 'nature's volume broad displayed,' it was his sole delight to read therein, happy if it might be his good fortune,

'Catching inspiration thence Some easy passage, raptured, to translate.'

He had been used in his early years to muse

'On rocks and hills and towers and wandering streams,'

and these now became the subjects of his song. Thomson, like his greater successor Burns, had from earliest boyhood been familiar with the burns and waters of his northern home. When he came to England he found but little entertainment in the landscapes around London, and longed for 'the living stream, the airy mountain, and the hanging rock.' He portrays with evident delight the changeful aspect of his native watercourses in the various seasons of the year. He knew well the 'deep morass' and 'shaking wilderness,' where many of them 'rise high among the hills,' and whence they assumed their 'mossy-tinctured' hue. He traces them as they 'roll o'er their rocky channel' until they at last lose themselves in 'the ample river' Tweed. He describes them as they appear at sheep-washing time, and dwells on their delights for boys as bathing-places. But it is their wilder moods that live most vividly in his memory, when

'From the hills O'er rocks and woods, in broad brown cataracts, A thousand snow-fed torrents shoot at once.'

It is worthy of remark, however, that even though nature is his theme, the poet writes rather as an interested spectator than as an earnest votary. He reveals no passion for the landscapes he depicts. He never appears as if himself a portion of the scene, alive with sympathy in all the varying moods of nature. His verse has no flashes of inspiration, such as contact with storm and spate drew from Burns. It was already, however, a great achievement that Thomson broke through the conventionalities of the time, and led his countrymen once more to the green fields, the moors, and the woodlands.

In the successive poems which when placed together made the Seasons, published in 1730, Thomson continued to draw on his recollections of the Scottish Border for the descriptions of landscape that form so fundamental a part of his theme. It is interesting to note that even after he had been five years in the south of England, and must have seen in that time much variety of weather and many different watercourses, it is still from the north that he draws his sketches. When, for instance, he tells how in autumn,

'Red from the hills, innumerable streams Tumultuous roar,'

the colour of his torrents betrays their Scottish origin. He was thinking of the spates in his native streams which sweep across tracts of Old Red Sandstone, and come down almost brick-red in hue. There are no red rocks, and therefore no red brooks in Middlesex and the surrounding districts.

But before the completion of the Seasons the influence of English lowland scenery had begun to impress itself on Thomson's imagination. The softer and ampler landscape of fruitful plains, with its richer agriculture and fuller population, its farms, villages, and country houses, filled his mind with a new pleasure. Some trace of this widened experience may be seen in the additions successively made to the earlier poems, such as the picture of Hagley Park introduced into the poem on Spring. But it was in his last effusion, The Castle of Indolence, that this English influence gained entire sway, and the Scottish memories faded into the background. Here we find ourselves amid the typical landscapes of the south of England--landscapes, however, so transfused by poetic genius as to acquire an individuality of their own. We are led into 'a lowly dale fast by a river's side'; we wander through 'sleep-soothing groves and quiet lawns between'; we see 'glittering streamlets' in a sunny glade'; we skirt a 'sable, silent, solemn forest'; and pass a 'wood of blackening pines,' which runs up the hills on either side, and see the famous castle 'close hid amid embowering trees,' that make a kind of chequered day and night. The landscape, we are told, 'inspires perfect ease'--a quality which must now have become indispensable to the 'bard, more fat than bard beseems.' Thomson, with his adoption of English scenery, had also polished his style and rid himself of much of his turgidity and latinism. He had changed his theme, too, and had chosen one more in consonance with the prevailing vogue. But to the end he had an eye for the charms of the free open face of nature. For the share he took in bringing back into our literature the recognition of these charms, he will ever hold an honourable place in the history of letters.

It was from another and somewhat dissimilar part of the Scottish lowlands that a far more powerful impulse than that of Thomson was given by the genius of Burns to the progress of the literary revolution of the eighteenth century. The landscapes of Ayrshire, where Burns was born and spent most of his life, though akin in their main aspects to those of Roxburghshire, present nevertheless certain well-marked differences in topography which were not without their influence on the muse that inspired Tam o' Shanter and Halloween.

The lowlands familiar to Burns throughout most of his life form a wide and undulating plain, surrounded on three sides by ranges of upland, and on the fourth by the open Firth of Clyde. The heights along the southern side belong to the long and broad chain of uplands which stretches from Portpatrick to Saint Abb's Head. Rising sometimes to more than 2,500 feet above the sea, they stretch as a wide pastoral country, much of which is still covered with 'muirs and mosses many.' These high grounds catch the clouds and mists from the Atlantic, and receive such a copious rainfall as to feed many large streams which cross the lowlands to the sea. The number and size of these streams form a notable feature in the scenery, and the different geological formations through which they flow have contributed to give much variety to their channels. Here they may be seen flowing in a narrow glen, there opening into a wider strath, or creeping sullenly in a narrow chasm between precipitous walls of naked stone, or dashing merrily over rock and boulder beneath overarching trees, or sweeping in wide curves through open meadows or dense woods, and finally carrying their burden of mossy water into the blue firth.

These streams, with their endless changes of aspect, their variations from season to season, their play of sunshine and shadow, their wild flowers and their birds, had a strong hold on the affections of Robert Burns. His best inspiration came to him from them. As he tells us himself:

'The Muse, na Poet ever fand her, Till by himsel he learn'd to wander Adown some trottin' burn's meander, An' no think lang; O sweet to stray, an' pensive ponder A heart-felt sang.'

In the poem from which these lines are quoted, after alluding to the poetic fame of other streams, while those of his own county remained unsung, the poet declares his resolve to atone for this neglect:

'We'll gar our streams and burnies shine Up wi' the best. We'll sing auld Coila's plains an' fells, Her moors red-brown wi' heather-bells, Her banks an' braes, her dens an' dells.'

Amply did he fulfil his promise. There is not a river, hardly even a tributary, within his reach, that has not been made famous in his lyrics. In the first bloom of opening manhood it was the Ayr and the Doon that gave him inspiration, and when broken in health and spirits, and with an early grave opening before him, it was by the banks of the Nith that his last poetic impulse arose.

In his relation to Nature there was this great difference between Burns and his literary contemporaries and immediate predecessors, that whereas even the best of them wrote rather as pleased spectators of the country, with all its infinite variety of form and colour, of life and sound, of calm and storm, he sang as one into whose very inmost heart the power of these things had entered. For the first time in English literature the burning ardour of a passionate soul went out in tumultuous joy towards Nature. The hills and woods, the streams and dells were to Burns not merely enjoyable scenes to be visited and described. They became part of his very being. In their changeful aspects he found the counterpart of his own variable moods; they ministered to his joys, they soothed his sorrows. They yielded him a companionship that never palled, a sympathy that never failed. They kindled his poetic ardour, and became themselves the subjects of his song. He loved them with all the overpowering intensity of his affectionate nature, and his feelings found vent in an exuberance of appreciation which had never before been heard in verse.

Among the natural objects which exerted this potent sway over the poetry of Burns, the streams of Ayrshire and Nithsdale ever held a foremost place. Their banks were his favourite haunt for reverie. They were familiar to him under every change of sky and season, from firth to fell. Each feature in their seaward course was noted by his quick eye, and treasured in his loving memory. Their union of ruggedness and verdure, of sombre woods and open haughs, of dark cliff and bright meadow, of brawling current and stealthy flow, furnished that variety which captivated his fancy, and found such fitting transposition to his verse. His descriptions and allusions, however, are never laboured and prominent; they are dashed off with the careless ease of a master-artist, whose main theme is the portrayal of human feeling. Even when the banks and braes have been the immediate source of his inspiration, Burns quickly passes from them into the world of emotion to which he makes them subservient.