ove, almost his only comfort and consolation in the dark days of his
later years. He set himself to this as to a congenial task, and he knew
that he was writing himself into the hearts of unborn generations. His
songs live; they are immortal, because every one is a bit of his soul.
These are no feverish, hysterical jingles of clinking verse, dead save
for the animating breath of music. They sing themselves, because the
spirit of song is in them. Quite as marvellous as his excellence in this
department of poetry is his variety of subject. He has a song for every
age; a musical interpretation of every mood. But this is a subject for a
book to itself. His songs are sung all over the world. The love he sings
appeals to all, for it is elemental, and is the love of all. Heart
speaks to heart in the songs of Robert Burns; there is a freemasonry in
them that binds Scotsmen to Scotsmen across the seas in the firmest
bonds of brotherhood.

What place Burns occupies as a poet has been determined not so much by
the voice of criticism, as by the enthusiastic way in which his
fellow-mortals have taken him to their heart. The summing-up of a judge
counts for little when the jury has already made up its mind. What
matters it whether a critic argues Burns into a first or second or third
rate poet? His countrymen, and more than his countrymen, his brothers
all the world over, who read in his writings the joys and sorrows, the
temptations and trials, the sins and shortcomings of a great-hearted
man, have accepted him as a prophet, and set him in the front rank of
immortals. They admire many poets; they love Robert Burns. They have
been told their love is unreasoning and unreasonable. It may be so. Love
goes by instinct more than by reason; and who shall say it is wrong? Yet
Burns is not loved because of his faults and failings, but in spite of
them. His sins are not hidden. He himself confessed them again and
again, and repented in sackcloth and ashes. If he did not always abjure
his weaknesses, he denounced them, and with no uncertain voice; nor do
we know how hardly he strove to do more.

What estimate is to be taken of Burns as a man will have many and
various answers. Those who still denounce him as the chief of sinners,
and without mercy condemn him out of his own mouth, are those whom Burns
has pilloried to all posterity. There are dull, phlegmatic beings with
blood no warmer than ditch-water, who are virtuous and sober citizens
be