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Excerpt

Excerpt from Familiar Studies of Men and Books, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Burns.—I have left the introductory sentences on Principal Shairp,
partly to explain my own paper, which was merely supplemental to his
amiable but imperfect book, partly because that book appears to me truly
misleading both as to the character and the genius of Burns. This seems
ungracious, but Mr. Shairp has himself to blame; so good a Wordsworthian
was out of character upon that stage.

This half apology apart, nothing more falls to be said except upon a
remark called forth by my study in the columns of a literary Review. The
exact terms in which that sheet disposed of Burns I cannot now recall;
but they were to this effect—that Burns was a bad man, the impure vehicle
of fine verses; and that this was the view to which all criticism tended.
Now I knew, for my own part, that it was with the profoundest pity, but
with a growing esteem, that I studied the man’s desperate efforts to do
right; and the more I reflected, the stranger it appeared to me that any
thinking being should feel otherwise. The complete letters shed, indeed,
a light on the depths to which Burns had sunk in his character of Don
Juan, but they enhance in the same proportion the hopeless nobility of
his marrying Jean. That I ought to have stated this more noisily I now
see; but that any one should fail to see it for himself, is to me a thing
both incomprehensible and worthy of open scorn. If Burns, on the facts
dealt with in this study, is to be called a bad man, I question very much
whether either I or the writer in the Review have ever encountered what
it would be fair to call a good one. All have some fault. The fault of
each grinds down the hearts of those about him, and—let us not blink the
truth—hurries both him and them into the grave. And when we find a man
persevering indeed, in his fault, as all of us do, and openly overtaken,
as not all of us are, by its consequences, to gloss the matter over, with
too polite biographers, is to do the work of the wrecker disfiguring
beacons on a perilous seaboard; but to call him bad, with a
self-righteous chuckle, is to be talking in one’s sleep with Heedless and
Too-bold in the arbour.

Yet it is undeniable that much anger and distress is raised in many
quarters by the least attempt to state plainly, what every one well
knows, of Burns’s profligacy, and of the fatal consequences of his
marriage. And for this there are perhaps two subsidiary reasons. For,
first, there is, in our drunken land, a certain privilege extended to
drunkenness. In Scotland, in particular, it is almost respectable, above
all when compared with any “irregularity between the sexes.” The
selfishness of the one, so much more gross in essence, is so much less
immediately conspicuous in its results that our demiurgeous Mrs. Grundy
smiles apologetically on its victims. It is often said—I have heard it
with these ears—that drunkenness “may lead to vice.” Now I did not think
it at all proved that Burns was what is called a drunkard; and I was
obliged to dwell very plainly on the irregularity and the too frequent
vanity and meanness of his relations to women. Hence, in the eyes of
many, my study was a step towards the demonstration of Burns’s radical
badness.

Explanation

Robert Louis Stevenson’s excerpt from Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882) is a passionate defense of the Scottish poet Robert Burns against moralistic criticisms that reduce him to a "bad man" whose poetic genius is tainted by personal failings. Stevenson’s essay is both a literary critique and a broader meditation on human nature, moral judgment, and the complexities of artistic legacy. Below is a detailed breakdown of the passage, focusing on its arguments, themes, literary devices, and significance, with emphasis on the text itself.

Context and Purpose

Stevenson’s Familiar Studies is a collection of essays reappraising historical and literary figures, often challenging conventional views. Here, he responds to two sources:

Principal Shairp’s biography of Burns (1879), which Stevenson finds "amiable but imperfect"—too sanitized and Wordsworthian (i.e., idealizing nature and morality) to capture Burns’s raw, contradictory genius.
An unnamed literary review that dismisses Burns as an "impure vehicle of fine verses," a moral failure whose art doesn’t redeem his personal sins.

Stevenson’s goal is to reclaim Burns’s humanity—not to excuse his flaws but to contextualize them within a broader, more compassionate understanding of human frailty. He argues that moralistic judgments (like the review’s) are simplistic and hypocritical, ignoring the universal struggle with vice.

Key Themes in the Excerpt

The Complexity of Moral Judgment
- Stevenson rejects binary labels ("good" vs. "bad"). He asserts that all humans have faults, and Burns’s are merely more visible:
  "If Burns, on the facts dealt with in this study, is to be called a bad man, I question very much whether either I or the writer in the Review have ever encountered what it would be fair to call a good one."
- His point: Moral superiority is an illusion. The reviewer’s "self-righteous chuckle" is as flawed as Burns’s profligacy, just less honest.
The Hypocrisy of Social Norms
- Stevenson critiques Scotland’s selective outrage—drunkenness is tolerated (even romanticized), while sexual "irregularity" is vilified, despite the former being "more gross in essence."
  "In Scotland, in particular, it is almost respectable, above all when compared with any ‘irregularity between the sexes.’"
- He mocks the Victorian double standard (embodied by "Mrs. Grundy," a symbol of priggish morality) that excuses alcoholism but condemns Burns’s relationships with women.
The Nobility of Struggle
- Stevenson admires Burns’s efforts to "do right" despite his failures, particularly his marriage to Jean Armour—a decision that, while born of guilt, also reflects a desperate attempt at redemption.
  "The complete letters shed... a light on the depths to which Burns had sunk in his character of Don Juan, but they enhance in the same proportion the hopeless nobility of his marrying Jean."
- The marriage is both a moral reckoning and a tragic irony: it’s noble yet doomed, mirroring Burns’s life.
Art vs. Morality
- Stevenson doesn’t separate Burns’s poetry from his life but argues that his flaws fuel his art. The reviewer’s dismissal of Burns as a "vehicle" for verse ignores how his struggles with sin, shame, and societal judgment shape his work’s power.
- Implicitly, Stevenson suggests that great art often emerges from moral ambiguity—a theme he’d later explore in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The Danger of Sanitized Biography
- He attacks polite biographers who "gloss over" flaws, comparing them to wreckers disfiguring beacons—misleading future generations by hiding the truth.
  "To gloss the matter over... is to do the work of the wrecker disfiguring beacons on a perilous seaboard."
- Honesty, even about vice, is necessary for true understanding.

Literary Devices and Rhetorical Strategies

Irony and Sarcasm
- Stevenson’s tone is sharply ironic, especially toward the reviewer:
  "The complete letters... enhance... the hopeless nobility of his marrying Jean. That I ought to have stated this more noisily I now see; but that any one should fail to see it for himself, is to me a thing both incomprehensible and worthy of open scorn."
  - The phrase "more noisily" mocks the expectation that he should shout what should be obvious.
- His reference to "Heedless and Too-bold in the arbour" (characters from a moralistic 18th-century ballad) satirizes the reviewer’s naïve moralizing.
Metaphor and Simile
- Wreckers and beacons: Biographers who hide the truth are like sailors who sabotage lighthouses, leading others to ruin.
- Drunkenness vs. sexual vice: He contrasts how society weighs sins differently, using drunkenness as a foil to highlight hypocrisy.
Appeal to Universal Experience
- Stevenson generalizes Burns’s flaws to all humanity:
  "All have some fault. The fault of each grinds down the hearts of those about him... and hurries both him and them into the grave."
- This democratizes sin, making the reviewer’s judgment seem petty.
Direct Address and Provocation
- He challenges the reader to confront their own hypocrisy:
  "Let us not blink the truth."
- The rhetorical question ("have we ever encountered a good one?") forces self-reflection.
Allusion
- Don Juan: Burns’s womanizing is framed as a literary archetype, not just personal failure.
- Wordsworthian: Shairp’s biography is criticized for imposing Romantic idealism onto Burns’s grittier reality.

Significance of the Passage

Rehabilitation of Burns’s Reputation
- Stevenson pushes back against Victorian moralism, arguing that Burns’s genius is inextricable from his flaws. This was radical in an era that often separated art from the artist’s life.
Stevenson’s Own Philosophical Stance
- The essay reflects Stevenson’s belief in human duality—a theme central to Jekyll and Hyde. Like Burns, humans are mixtures of good and evil, and morality is contextual, not absolute.
- His empathy for "sinners" aligns with his later works (e.g., The Master of Ballantrae), where complex villains evoke sympathy.
Critique of Biographical Conventions
- Stevenson advocates for warts-and-all biography, influencing later literary criticism (e.g., Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians).
- He rejects hagiography, insisting that truth, even ugly truth, is more valuable than flattery.
Cultural Commentary on Scotland
- His attack on Scottish hypocrisy—tolerating drunkenness while condemning sexual libertinism—remains relevant in discussions of national identity and moral double standards.

Close Reading of Key Lines

"The complete letters shed... a light on the depths to which Burns had sunk in his character of Don Juan, but they enhance in the same proportion the hopeless nobility of his marrying Jean."
- Contrast: "Depths" (moral failure) vs. "nobility" (redemptive act).
- "Hopeless nobility": Oxymoron—his marriage is admirable but doomed, reflecting his tragic heroism.
"To call him bad, with a self-righteous chuckle, is to be talking in one’s sleep with Heedless and Too-bold in the arbour."
- "Self-righteous chuckle": The reviewer’s judgment is smug and unconscious.
- "Talking in one’s sleep": Their moralizing is automatic, thoughtless, like characters in a moral fable.
"It is often said—I have heard it with these ears—that drunkenness ‘may lead to vice.’ Now I did not think it at all proved that Burns was what is called a drunkard."
- "With these ears": Emphasizes personal witness, undermining the cliché.
- The passive "it is often said" mocks the unquestioned platitudes of society.

Conclusion: Stevenson’s Defense as a Manifesto

This excerpt is more than a defense of Burns—it’s a manifesto for nuanced moral and literary criticism. Stevenson argues that:

Greatness and flaw are intertwined (a theme he’d explore in his fiction).
Judgment without empathy is hollow.
Truth, even uncomfortable truth, is essential to understanding art and humanity.

His passionate, combative tone reflects his own struggles with societal expectations (as a bohemian artist in a conservative era) and his belief that literature should confront, not comfort. In reclaiming Burns, Stevenson also challenges the reader to examine their own prejudices—a challenge as relevant today as in 1882.

Questions

Question 1

Stevenson’s characterisation of the literary Review’s dismissal of Burns as “a bad man, the impure vehicle of fine verses” is primarily intended to expose which of the following flaws in moral criticism?

A. The tendency to conflate artistic merit with personal virtue, thereby undermining the autonomy of aesthetic judgment.
B. The hypocrisy of reducing complex human behaviour to simplistic binary labels while ignoring the critic’s own moral inconsistencies.
C. The failure to recognise that poetic genius is inherently incompatible with conventional morality, rendering such judgments irrelevant.
D. The assumption that biographical details should be the sole lens through which an artist’s work is evaluated, neglecting textual analysis.
E. The implicit class bias in moral judgments, whereby working-class artists like Burns are held to stricter standards than their aristocratic peers.

Question 2

When Stevenson asserts that “the complete letters shed... a light on the depths to which Burns had sunk in his character of Don Juan, but they enhance in the same proportion the hopeless nobility of his marrying Jean,” he employs a rhetorical strategy that primarily serves to:

A. undermine the credibility of Burns’s defenders by conceding his moral failings while still praising his actions.
B. demonstrate that Burns’s literary persona (Don Juan) was entirely distinct from his real-life decisions, thus compartmentalising his sins.
C. illustrate the paradoxical coexistence of moral failure and redemptive effort, forcing the reader to confront the ambiguity of human motivation.
D. suggest that Burns’s marriage was a calculated attempt to salvage his reputation rather than a genuine act of contrition.
E. argue that the letters themselves are unreliable sources, given their contradictory portrayals of Burns’s character.

Question 3

Stevenson’s comparison of “polite biographers” who “gloss the matter over” to “the wrecker disfiguring beacons on a perilous seaboard” is most effectively interpreted as an accusation that such biographers:

A. deliberately distort historical records to protect their own reputations as scholars.
B. engage in a form of intellectual vandalism by obscuring the truths that could guide others away from similar moral dangers.
C. are motivated by a desire to sensationalise Burns’s life, thereby attracting more readers to their works.
D. lack the literary skill necessary to portray complex figures like Burns, resorting instead to simplistic moral narratives.
E. prioritise the comfort of contemporary readers over historical accuracy, reflecting a broader cultural aversion to uncomfortable truths.

Question 4

The phrase “talking in one’s sleep with Heedless and Too-bold in the arbour” is best understood as a device to:

A. evoke a nostalgic, almost whimsical tone, softening Stevenson’s otherwise harsh critique of the Review’s moralism.
B. ridicule the Review’s critic by aligning their moral judgments with the naive, allegorical characters of a didactic ballad.
C. suggest that the critic’s arguments are so deeply embedded in cultural tradition that they are effectively unconscious and automatic.
D. imply that the critic’s objections to Burns are rooted in a fear of the poetic imagination’s subversive power.
E. contrast the critic’s modern, sophisticated perspective with the outdated moral frameworks of the past.

Question 5

Stevenson’s broader argument about the “privilege extended to drunkenness” in Scotland, as opposed to the condemnation of “irregularity between the sexes,” is primarily intended to:

A. expose the arbitrary nature of moral taboos, which vary across cultures and historical periods.
B. defend Burns’s alcoholism as a lesser vice than his sexual profligacy, thereby mitigating the overall severity of his moral failings.
C. reveal the selective outrage of a society that condemns visible transgressions while tolerating those that are more socially ingrained but equally destructive.
D. argue that Scotland’s cultural attitudes toward vice are uniquely hypocritical compared to those of other nations.
E. suggest that Burns’s real tragedy was his inability to conform to the specific moral expectations of his time and place.

Solutions and Explanations

1) Correct answer: B

Why B is most correct: Stevenson’s critique targets the hypocrisy of moral absolutism—the Review’s reduction of Burns to a “bad man” ignores the universality of human flaw and the critic’s own implicit moral inconsistencies. The passage emphasises that such binary judgments are self-righteous and blind to nuance, particularly when the critic fails to apply the same standard to themselves. Stevenson’s scorn for the “self-righteous chuckle” and his rhetorical question directly support this interpretation.