e hourly expecting to be
confined and unable to attend to him, and Jessie Lewars taking her
place, a constant and devoted nurse. On the fourth day after his return,
July 21, he sank into delirium, and his children were summoned to the
bedside of their dying father, who quietly and gradually sank to rest.
His last words showed that his mind was still disturbed by the thought
of the small debt that had caused him so much annoyance. 'And thus he
passed,' says Carlyle, 'not softly, yet speedily, into that still
country where the hailstorms and fire-showers do not reach, and the
heaviest laden wayfarer at length lays down his load.'

CHAPTER IX

SUMMARY AND ESTIMATE

In Mrs. Riddell's sketch of Burns, which appeared shortly after his
death, she starts with the somewhat startling statement that poetry was
not actually his _forte_. She did not question the excellence of his
songs, or seek to depreciate his powers as a poet, but she spoke of the
man as she had known him, and was one of the first to assert that Burns
was very much more than an uneducated peasant with a happy knack of
versification. Even in the present day we hear too much of the inspired
ploughman bursting into song as one that could not help himself, and
warbling of life and love in a kind of lyrical frenzy. The fact is that
Burns was a great intellectual power, and would have been a force in any
sphere of life or letters. All who met him and heard him talk have
insisted on the greatness of the man, apart from his achievements in
poetry. It was not his fame as a poet that made him the lion of a season
in Edinburgh, but the force and brilliancy of his conversation; and it
needs more than the reputation of a minstrel to explain the hold he has
on the affection and intelligence of the world to-day.

On the other hand, it would be a mistake to accept his intellectual
greatness as a mere tradition of those who knew him, and to regret that
he has not left us some long and ponderous work worthy of the power he
possessed. It is an absurd idea to imagine that every great poet ought
to write an epic or a play. Burns's powers were concentrative, and he
could put into a song what a dramatist might elaborate into a five-act
tragedy; but that is not to say that the dramatist is the greater poet.
After all, the song is the more likely to live, and the more likely,
therefore, to keep the mission of the poet an enduring and living
influence in the lives of men.

S