when Scotland thinks of him, she quotes the lines which he wrote for
_Tam Samson's Elegy_:--

"Heav'n rest his saul, whare'er he be!
Is th' wish o' mony mae than me:
He had twa faults, or maybe three,
Yet what remead?[11]
Ae social, honest man want we."

Burns's Poetic Creed.--We can understand and enjoy Burns much better
if we know his object in writing poetry and the point of view from
which he regarded life. It would be hard to fancy the intensity of the
shock which the school of Pope would have felt on reading this
statement of the poor plowman's poetic creed:--

"Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire,
That's a' the learning I desire;
Then tho' I drudge thro' dub an' mire
At pleugh or cart,
My Muse, though hamely in attire,
May touch the heart."[12]

Burns's heart had been touched with the loves and sorrows of life, and
it was his ambition to sing so naturally of these as to touch the
hearts of others.

With such an object in view, he did not disdain to use in his best
productions much of the Scottish dialect, the vernacular of the
plowman and the shepherd. The literary men of Edinburgh, who would
rather have been convicted of a breach of etiquette than of a
Scotticism, tried to induce him to write pure English; but the Scotch
words which he first heard from his mother's lips seemed to possess
more "o' Nature's fire." He ended by touching the heart of Scotland
and making her feel more proud of this dialect, of him, and of
herself.

[Illustration: BURNS AND HIGHLAND MARY. _From the painting by James
Archer_.]

Union of the Elizabethan with the Revolutionary Spirit.--In no
respect does the poetry of Burns more completely part company with the
productions of the classical school than in the expression of feeling.
The emotional fire of Elizabethan times was restored to literature. No
poet except Shakespeare has ever written more nobly impassioned love
songs. Burns's song beginning:--

"Ae fond kiss and then
we sever"

seemed to both Byron and Scott to contain the essence of a thousand
love tales. This unaffected, passionate treatment of love had long
been absent from our literature; but intensity of genuine feeling
reappeared in Burns's _Highland Mary, I Love My Jean, Farewell to
Nancy, To Mary in Heaven, O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast_, which last
Mendelssohn thought exquisite enough to set to music. The poetry of
Burns throbs with varying emotio