Robert Fergusson

Robert Fergusson (5 September 1750 - 16 October 1774) was a Scottish poet, a leading figure of the revival of Scots vernacular writing in the 18th century.

Robert Fergusson (1750-1774). Portrait by Alexander Runciman (1736-1785). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Life

Overview

Fergusson, son of a bank clerk, was educated at the University of St. Andrews. His father dying, he became a copying clerk in an Edin. lawyer's office. Early displaying a talent for humorous descriptive verse, he contributed to Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine, then the principal Scottish receptacle for fugitive page 137poetry. His verses, however, attracted attention by their merit, and he pub. some of them in a coll. form. Unfortunately he fell into dissipated habits, under which his delicate constitution gave way, and he died insane in his 24th year. His poems influenced Burns, who greatly admired them.

Youth and education

Fergusson was born at Edinburgh in a lane somewhere in the course of the modern North Bridge Street. His father, William Fergusson, was at the time clerk to the only haberdasher in the city, having a few years previously left his native Tarland, Aberdeenshire, in search of improved fortune. His mother was the youngest daughter of John Forbes, a man of agricultural position in Aberdeenshire, and a cadet of the house of Tolquhon. Their family probably numbered 5 in all, with Robert the 3rd son.

Both parents were upright and persevering, and the father pushed forward till he held, at his death in 1767, the position of managing clerk in the linen department of the British Linen Company, Edinburgh. Fergusson's mother had taught him carefully, and although a very delicate boy, he passed through a preparatory school with distinction, and entered the high school at an unusually early age.

When he had been 4 years here, on the advice of his uncle, John Forbes, farmer and factor in Aberdeenshire, and through the influence of Lord Finlater, chancellor of Scotland, he secured a Fergusson bursary, which implied preparatory study at the grammar school, Dundee, and a 4 years' curriculum at the University of St. Andrews. He matriculated at St. Andrews in February 1765, intending to study for the church.

Fergusson at St. Andrews was brilliant and attractive, being generally popular with his fellow-students and professors. His distinction as a student would seem to have been scientific rather than literary. David Gregory, professor of mathematics in the university, died in the course of Fergusson's freshman year, and it is more than probable that he wrote immediately afterwards (in a stanza favoured by Burns) the clever but irreverent "Elegy on the Death of Mr. David Gregory."

He soon became known as a youthful poet of unusual promise. The elegy just mentioned, and perhaps 1 or 2 more, have alone survived, and the "dramatic fragments," given by some of the poet's biographers as specimens of his more ambitious attempts while a student, are of no importance. He owed not a little to the influence of Wilkie of the Epigoniad, the eccentric professor of natural philosophy, who fully recognised his merits.

Fergusson's high spirits and impulsive temper got him into occasional difficulties with the authorities, but he left St. Andrews respected by all who had known him best. Having finished the 4 years' curriculum he returned to his widowed mother in 1768, resolved not to study for the church.

Career

In 1769 Fergusson paid a visit to his uncle, John Forbes, at Round Lichnot, Aberdeenshire. While there Lord Finlater one day dined with Forbes, who was naturally anxious to introduce his nephew to his patron. Fergusson presented himself in so untidy a dress that the uncle rebuked and refused to present him. Fergusson left the house at once, and made his way to Edinburgh in spite of entreaties to return.

There seems to be no foundation for the stories told by biographers, which represent the uncle as brutal, and Fergusson as retorting by a severe epistle addressed from the nearest public-house. Nor does it seem possible to connect with the episode the 2 poems, "Decay of Friendship" and "Against Repining at Fortune," which did not appear till about 3 years later. While at Round Lichnot Fergusson was in the habit of assembling the servants on Sundays, and preaching to them "from the mouth of the peat-stack" with such impressive fervour as to leave them "bathed in tears."

Fergusson declined to study medicine. His sensitive nature shrank from the proposal, and he said that he seemed to have in his own person symptoms of every disease to which he gave special attention. He presently found a situation as extracting clerk in the commissary clerk's office, which he held to the end of his life, with the exception of a few months in the sheriff clerk's office, from which he was glad to retreat owing to his pain in connection with the enforcing of executions. Fergusson probably despised the drudgery of law.

In any case he found that he could write poetry, and became well known in Edinburgh society. Apparently he was a satisfactory copying-clerk, but it was a genuine relief to him when, as early as 1769, he "formed an acquaintance with several players and musicians." Among these were Woods the actor, and the famous singer Tenducci, for whom he wrote 3 songs to be sung in the opera Artaxerxes. These songs, set to 3 familiar Scottish airs, while not specially striking either in sentiment or structure, are important as early illustrations of Fergusson's efforts in verse. They occupy the first place among his English Poems in the works as published by Fullarton & Co., the most satisfactory edition.

In 1771 Fergusson became a regular contributor to Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine; or, Edinburgh amusement. He began with pastorals, according to the orthodox method of the 18th century. Presently, however, by the contribution of several Scottish poems, he was hailed as the direct successor to Allan Ramsay.

From all parts of the country his fame began to be sounded, and before the end of 1772 he was the intimate friend of many of the most important and the most gifted men of Scotland. He was invited by country gentlemen to spend holidays at their residences. He seems to have been a witty and entertaining companion.

By the end of 1772 he began to suffer from want of sufficient self-restraint. In October of that year he joined the Cape Club, which included David Herd, the editor of Scots Songs and Ballads, Runciman the printer, and other prominent Edinburgh citizens. The club was a somewhat exclusive and well-conducted debating society. But unfortunately he frequented other haunts at times, and his only defence was the pathetic exclamation, "Oh, sir, anything to forget my poor mother and these aching fingers!"

In 1773 Fergusson collected his contributions to the magazine, and published through the Ruddimans a 12mo volume under the general title Poems by R. Fergusson. He made some money by the publication, and he speedily produced other pieces that added to his fame, including the "Address to the Tron Kirk Bell," "Caller Water," the "Rising" and the "Sitting of the Session," the "Odes to the Bee and Gowdspink," and the "Farmer's Ingle," the prototype of the "Cottar's Saturday Night."

The poet, meanwhile, became hopeless over his prospects, and thought of going to sea like his elder brother Henry, who had been away for several years. Ultimately he returned to his desk, and resumed his former habits. He would still sing his Scottish songs, and indulge in an occasional frolic, but his strength gradually gave way. A chance interview with the Rev. John Brown of Haddington startled him into a sense of his spiritual position. He burned various unpublished manuscripts, and would study nothing but his bible.

A fall down a staircase brought on an illness that ended in insanity. He had to be confined in the public asylum, where he died, a few hours after a pathetic interview with his mother and his sister, on 16 October 1774. He was buried in the Canongate churchyard.

Writing

When Fergusson reaches his highest level, as he does in his "Farmer's Ingle," "Leith Races," the poems on the session, "Caller Oysters," and "Braid Claith," his work presents the rare qualities of keen observation, subtle and suggestive humour, epigrammatic felicity, quick flashes of dramatic delineation, and quaintly pathetic touches of sentiment, all indicative of unusual genius.

The principal editions of Fergusson's poems are: ‘Poems,’ 1773; ‘Poems on Various Subjects,’ with a short life by T. Ruddiman, 1779; ‘Poems on Various Subjects,’ in two parts, Perth, 1789; ‘Works of Robert Fergusson,’ with life by D. Irving, and three engravings, Glasgow, 1800; ‘Works,’ with longer biography, by A. Peterkin, London, 1807; ‘Poems of Robert Fergusson,’ with a sketch of the author's life and cursory view of his writings, by J. Bannington, London, 1809; an edition in two volumes, printed at Alnwick in 1814, with engravings by Bewick; an edition printed in Edinburgh in 1821, with life by James Gray of the high school; one edited by Robert Chambers in 1840, with life and footnotes; and ‘The Works of Robert Fergusson,’ with life and essay on poetical genius, by A. B. G[rosart], 1851.

Fergusson's literary output was both urban and pastoral in equal degree. He was often an effective satirist and generally nationalist in themes and outlook. Although small, his canon stands as an important artistic and linguistic bridge between the generation of Allan Ramsay (1686–1758) and most later writers in Scots. His bilingual career was the acknowledged inspiration for the career of Robert Burns. Many leading makars of the 20th century, such as Robert Garioch or Sydney Goodsir Smith, similarly recognised his importance. More widely, however, his legacy has tended to be unjustly neglected.

Many works by Burns either echo or are directly modelled on works by Fergusson. For example "Leith Races" unquestionably supplied the model for Burns' "Holy Fair". "On seeing a Butterfly in the Street" has reflections in it which strikingly correspond with "To a Mouse". Comparisons, such as between Fergusson's "The Farmer's Ingle" and Burns' "The Cottar's Saturday Night", often demonstrate the creative complexity of the influence.

Critical introduction

by John Service

Fergusson is an interesting figure in the literary history of his country as an instance of precocious poetical talent, and as a link between his predecessor Ramsay and his mightier successor Burns. His fame is indissolubly associated with that of Burns, not only because Burns erected a monument over his grave, and inscribed on it one of those rapturous eulogies which the mention of Fergusson’s name always called forth from him, but still more because of the extraordinary flattery which Burns bestowed upon him by imitating him almost as often and as much as he surpassed him. Specimens of Burns’ ‘’prentice hand’ are preserved in the larger editions of his works. But they are few in number as well as of slender significance in regard to the possibilities of his genius. It was the reading of Fergusson’s poems, he himself tells us, which moved him to resume his ‘wildly sounding lyre,’ when in his early manhood he had for a time laid it aside. The same influence which recalled him to the service of the Muses dictated to a surprising extent the choice and the treatment of his themes throughout his poetical career, and certainly during its most fertile period. So many of his best-known pieces, like The Holy Fair, The Cotter’s Saturday Night, his epistles and satires, bear obvious traces of having been suggested by his youthful predecessor’s slender volume of song, that it is as if Burns, solitary genius in other respects, were solitary also in this respect—that his juvenilia were not written by his own hand, but by a poetical predecessor still more precocious than himself. Fergusson’s achievements in verse are the starting-points of Burns’ triumphs.

He who opens Fergusson’s volume in the expectation of finding another Burns is destined to be disappointed. But he is likely to be consoled for this disappointment by the discovery that not a few of the marked qualities of the poetry of the later singer characterise, as if in immature form, the verse of his predecessor. There are present in the poems of each the same easy artless versification, the same love of nature and of human nature, the same humour, the same philosophy of common sense applied to social life, the same lively imagination; only what is ripe incomparable genius in the one is no more than precocious and surprising talent in the other. In this light it is fair to Fergusson as well as to Burns, and not injurious to the reputation of the younger poet, to compare Braid Claith with The Epistle to a Young Friend, or the Ode to the Gowdspink with The Mouse or The Mountain Daisy. Between Burns and his predecessor too there is this link of connection—the English poems of the one are of as little account as those of the other.

Precocity, which is usually a disease accompanying other diseases and symptomatic of them, from the first marked Fergusson for its own. All through his school and university course he was sickly, gentle and amiable, surprisingly quick and clever, a prodigy destined to an early grave. At twenty-one he is the most famous Scotch poet of his day, and his poems, apart from some pastorals which had served the purpose of poetical exercises, are chiefly short pieces in which he celebrates the life which he knows best, that of an Edinburgh clerk, and the life which he loves best, that of country swains. It is with much of the grace and gaiety of Horace growing old and mellow, secure of fame and wine and friendship and mastery of his art, that the starved young Edinburgh clerk sings of scenes of gaiety and mild dissipation, in which his part was more fatal to his health than discreditable to his character, and from these noctes ambrosianae turns to the farmer’s ingle, and the frolic and innocent and healthy life of the denizens of meadows and uplands remote from towns.

As if he were old before his time, he is little inspired by the passion from which the Greek dramatist was happy to be delivered by age, and from which Burns had no wish ever to escape. Similarly he is a city spark and a satirist of the city magistrates and the city guard, rather in the genial, reflective, humorous mood of the decline of life than with the passion of youth. His range of subjects is narrowed by the narrow space of a career which began at twenty-one and was finished at twenty-four. He had a keen enjoyment of city life, with its clubs for a little dissipation, and its bailies and its ‘black banditti’ for a constant occasion of laughter. Still more keen on his part was that enjoyment of the country, the pleasures of which he seldom tasted except in imagination, but which supplies the inspiration of some of his most touching verses, as well as of some of his admirable mock heroics. We alternate in his verse between these two sets of themes, and in his treatment of both we meet with the same vein of pure pathos, and its almost unfailing accompaniment of genuine humour.

Recognition

Statue of Fergusson by David Annand, Royal Mile, Edinburgh, 2012. Photo by Stefan Schäfer. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Common.

Ruddiman's 1773 edition of Fergusson's work was reprinted in 1779 with a supplement containing additional poems. A 2nd edition appeared in 1785. There are later editions, by Robert Chambers (1850) and Alexander Grosart (1851). A life of Fergusson is included in David Irving's Lives of the Scottish Poets, and in Robert Chambers's Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Scotsmen. Alexander Grosart also contributed a biography of Fergusson for the "Famous Scots Series", (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1898).

A memorial headstone, designed by local architect Robert Burn, for Fergusson's grave was privately commissioned in 1787 by Robert Burns and paid for at his own expense. In the later 19th century, Robert Louis Stevenson intended to renovate the stone, but died before he could do so. The epitaph that Stevenson planned to add to the stone is recorded on a plaque added to the grave by the Saltire Society on the Society's 50th anniversary in 1995.

The statue outside Canongate Churchyard on the Royal Mile was unveiled on 17 October 2004, following a competition for a memorial to Fergusson. The sculptor was David Annand.

Fergusson's life had an important non-literary influence. The brutal circumstances of the poet's death prompted one of his visitors in Darien House, young doctor Andrew Duncan (1744–1828), to pioneer better institutional practices for the treatment of mental health problems through the creation of what is today the Royal Edinburgh Hospital.

Publications

Poetry

• Poems. Edinburgh: Walter & Thomas Ruddiman, 1773.
• Poems on Various Subjects. Edinburgh: Thomas Ruddiman for J. Bell, J. Dickson, W. Creech, C. Elliot, P. Anderson, & J Simpson, 1779, 1782.
• The Farmer's Ingle: A Scottish poem. Glasgow: Brash & Reid, 1797.
• Poetical Works. Glasgow: Chapman & Lang, 1800.
• Poems. Edinburgh: Oliver, 1806; Philadelphia: Chapman, 1815.
• Poems (edited by James Gray). Edinburgh: J. Fairbairn, et al, 1821.
• Poetical Works. London & Edinburgh: William & Robert Chambers, 1840, 1871.
• Poems (with Life by Robert Aitken). Edinburgh: W.J. Hay at John Knox's House, 1890.
• Poetical Works. Paisley, Scotland, UK: Alexander Gairdner, 1905.
• Poems (edited by Matthew MacDiarmid). (2 volumes), Edinburgh: William Blackwood for the Scottish Text Society, 1953.
• Poems (edited by William B. Reid). Edinburgh: Robert Fergusson Society, 2005.

Collected editions

• Works (edited by Alexander Balloch Grosart). London: S.A. & H. Oddy, 1807; New York: AMS Press 1973.
• "Heaven-Taught Fergusson", Robert Burns's Favourite Poet: Poems and essays (edited by Robert Crawford). East Linten, UK: Tuckwell, 2003.

Robert Fergusson

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• Habbie stanza
• List of British poets

References

•  Bayne, Thomas Wilson (1889) "Fergusson, Robert" in Stephen, Leslie Dictionary of National Biography 18 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 362-364  . Wikisource, Web, Jan. 12, 2018.

External links

Poems

• "Caller Water" in The Book of Georgian Verse
• Robert Fergusson at Electric Scotland (profile & 3 poems)
• Robert Fergusson at the Scottish Poetry Library (profile & 5 poems)
• Robert Fergusson at PoemHunter (2 poems)
• Fergusson, Robert (1750-1774) (3 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Ferguson in The English Poets: An anthology: "The Daft Days," "Braid Cloth" Extract from "Caller Water", "Ode to the Gowdspink"
• Robert Fergusson at AllPoetry (4 poems)
• Robert Fergusson (1750-1774) info & 10 poems at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• Robert Fergusson at Poetry Nook (79 poems)

Books

• Robert Fergusson at Amazon.com

About

• Robert Fergusson in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Fergusson, Robert in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• "Robert Fergusson: The dilemma of the poet in eighteenth-century Scotland"
• Robert Fergusson Society

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Fergusson, Robert