Address by The Hon J Nimmo

Mr Stoddart, ladies and gentlemen of Ballarat – My first duty on this auspicious occasion is to thank the people of Ballarat and the Burns Memorial Committee for having invited me to take part in the important proceedings of this day.    It would not be possible to confer a higher honour on me than you have done in inviting me to attend here and take part in this ceremony of unveiling the statue of one of my countrymen and one of whom I am so proud – a statue erected by the noble-minded people of Ballarat.   And, my second duty is to address a few words to those present upon the life, character and works of the poet to whose memory this noble statue is erected.   On the 25h January 1759, in a clay-built cottage two miles from the town of Ayr, Robert Burns was first introduced to the world and on the 21^st July 1796 in a small house in the town of Dumfries, he breathed his latest sigh, and those of us who have traced his chequered career through the short vista bounded by these dates are here this day in Ballarat to pay tribute of respect to the memory of that remarkable man.

In a humorous song relating to his birth, we are informed that he was attended in his natal hour by a gossip who, in compliance with the custom of her class, presaged his future career in this world by reading the lines on the palm of his hand for the song says:-

The gossip keekit in his loof

Quo’ scho, “Wha lives will see the proof

This waly boy will be nae coof

I think we’ll ca’ him Robin;

He’ll hae misfortunes great and sma’

But aye a heart aboon them a’

He’ll be a credit tae us a’

We’ll a’ be proud o’ Robin”

Well, Burns’ misfortunes commences almost immediately after these very remarkable words are said to have been uttered.  During the first week of his existence in this world, the roof of the clay-built cottage in which he was born gave way before the force of a tempestuous gale that was raging in the west of Scotland; and the young mother, with the baby bard in her arms, had to be conveyed to a neighbouring cottage for shelter.   Burns, like Shakespeare, may be said to have been born in poverty and cradled in misfortune.   Neither of them received a classical education, their parents being too poor to permit of them accomplishing that end.   Still, notwithstanding this unfortunate circumstance few names will live longer in history than those of William Shakespeare and Robert Burns.  The dramatic productions of the Bard of Avon and the ballad poetry of the Scottish ploughman, have been pronounced by competent critics among the literati of Europe to be, alike, imperishable.   Shakespeare reached the proud eminence to which his native genius entitled him, but poor Burns was cut off by an untimely death before he attained that end.   Still the fragments that have been collected from that bruised and shattered Colossus have engaged the attention of more critics and historians than the writings of any other man and those critics and historians are for the most part authors not unknown to fame – authors whose names are certainly not written on the scroll of common man.   For example criticisms have been written on the works of Burns by Wordsworth, Jeffrey, Carlyle, Haslitt, Aird, Gillian,and Sir Archibald Alison.   And histories have been written by the poet himself (for he left his own biography), his brother (Gilbert Burns), Dr Currie of Liverpool, Professor Walker of the Glasgow College, Lockart, Hogg, Findlater and last, but not least, Professor Wilson.   Well, when those able criticisms and histories had been furnished to the world by men of high talent, bright genius and profound erudition, it is natural that the world under such teachers should cast about for an opportunity of expressing its opinion as to the true position occupied by Burns as an author and a poet; and that opportunity presented itself on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the poet’s birthday.   The great Burns centenary on the 25^th of January 1859, saw the whole civilised world in a state of enthusiastic commotion.   In the principal cities and towns in England, Scotland and Ireland – in fact, throughout Europe, especially in Germany, where Burns works have been four times translated into that language, throughout the United States of America, the Canadas, Australia, India, Africa, Japan and China festive gatherings were held in honour of the Ayrshire ploughman.   I am not aware that any other man in the ranks of either literature or science received such an honour before, and I submit that the verdict of that day cannot be reversed.  Now, what was that verdict?  Why, it was just this. That but for his span of life having been cut short by a premature death, he would have developed results equal to the greatest poets on earth.   And that the little that he did produce proved conclusively that he possessed a keen penetrating intellect, a lively and fertile imagination, a poetic faculty with inventive genius and descriptive powers that placed him on a qualitative level with Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare and Milton.   But, as I have said, Burns’ life was a short one.   He died when he was, comparatively speaking, but a very young man, only thirty-seven years of age.   Homer is said to have been between eighty and ninety when he died, but the date of his birth and his death are, alike, unknown – in fact, his whole history seems to be a terra incognita.   Virgil was fifty-one at his death; Dante fifty-six; Shakespeare fifty-three; Milton sixty-six and Scott sixty-one.   Had Burns been permitted to live (say) another twenty years, until he was fifty-seven, I have no hesitation in saying he would have produced works that would have compared favourably, from a quantitative point of view, with those of the great masters of the past; but it has not been upon the quantity, but upon the quality of his works that the world’s verdict has been pronounced.  Burns works may be divided into three parts – his prose writings, his poems and his songs.  Dr Robertson and Dr Chalmers were both of the opinion that his prose writings, when viewed from the standpoint of his early training, were even more remarkable than his poems.   Those writings, especially his letters to Cunningham, Mrs Dunlop and Dr Moore have been frequently held up by critics as perfect models of English composition.   It is to be regretted that those letters have not been published in every instance along with his poems.   His dictum is pure, chaste and elegant and the sentences turned with neat, clear precision of an Addison.   Those of our Victorian youth who wish to excel as writers of our noble and beautiful English language would do well to study the letters of Robert Burns.   It is in his poems, however, that the strength of his mighty intellect and the wealth and power of his native genius are unfolded.   The two poems that illustrate best, in my opinion, his dramatic skill, creative invention and descriptive powers are his “Tam O’ Shanter” and his ‘Jolly Beggars.’   I venture to say that, in them, the genius, wit and humour that sparkle like gems in every line of these two poems have never been surpassed – and I think you agree with me when I say his poetical epistles to “I apraik,” and “A Young Friend,” his ‘Twa Dogs,’ his address ‘To Mary in Heaven,’ his “Cottar’s Saturday Night” his ‘To a Mouse’ and ‘Mountain Daisy,’ not forgetting his ‘Address to the Diel,’ ‘Holy Willie’.   These reveal a rich, original and inexhaustible power of moralising through inimitable verse.  His keenest satires were written for the purpose of exposing the deformity of vice and removing abuses that had incorporated themselves with the political and ecclesiastical institutions of his country.   Burns was incomparably the greatest song writer Scotland ever produced.   Scotsmen, and I am one, admire and are proud of Campbell, Byron and Scott but, in addition to admiration and pride, they love Burns.   His songs are the sympathetic links that bind him, not only to Scotland but, to the whole world.   These songs crystallise almost every emotion of the human heart, and that is the secret of their power.   The melting pathos of ‘Afton Water,’ ‘My Nannie’s Awa,’ ‘Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon,’ ‘Of a’ the airts the wind can bla’,’(which was penned while sighing for his Jean), and ‘Auld Lang Syne (which will touch the hearts of the people for all time) and many others I could name, are songs that will never die.   They live in the past and will continue in the future to touch the tenderest chords of the human heart, no matter to what creed or country they belong.   The noble and manly song ‘A Man’s a Man For A’ That,’ which the band so nicely played today, taught the toiling millions in our hives of industry to weigh their great worth and importance in the scales of noble action and honest intention, altogether irrespective of wealth, for it taught them that “the honest man though ere so poor, is king o’ men for a’ that.”   The noble, heroic and soul-stirring song of ‘Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,” has nerved the arm of the British soldier to turn the tide of battle in many a hard-fought field, when the fate of glorious empire was trembling in the balance.   The life and writings of Robert Burns furnish cheering and conclusive evidence to the sons of toil in every land that humble birth, association with poverty and manual labour do not form insuperable obstacles in the way of a man who is bent on self improvement, attaining to a distinguished position in the world: for if you scan the scroll of fame in search of names that know not of death, you will find the name of this man, Robert Burns, the Ayrshire ploughman.