embodiment of his feelings at a
particular moment. He is for ever revealing himself to the reader, even
in poems that might with propriety be said to be purely objective. His
writings in a greater degree than the writings of any other author are
the direct expression of his own experiences; and in his poems and songs
he is so invariably true to himself, so dominated by the mood of the
moment, that every one of them gives us some glimpse into the heart and
soul of the writer. In his letters he is rarely so happy; frequently he
is writing up to certain models, and ceases to be natural. Consequently
we often miss in them the character and spirituality that is never
absent from his poetry. But his poems and songs, chronologically
arranged, might make in themselves, and without the aid of any running
commentary, a tolerably complete biography. Reading them, we note the
development of his character and the growth of his powers as a poet; we
can see at any particular time his attitude towards the world, and the
world's attitude towards him; we have, in fine, a picture of the man in
his relations to his fellow-man and in relation to circumstances, and
may learn if we will what mark he made on the society of his time, and
what effect that society had on him. And that surely is an important
essential of perfect biography.

But otherwise the story of Burns's life has been told with such
minuteness of detail, that the internal evidence of his poetry would
seem only to be called in to verify or correct the verdict of tradition
and the garbled gossip of those wise after the fact of his fame. It is
so easy after a man has compelled the attention of the world to fill up
the empty years of his life when he was all unknown to fame, with
illustrative anecdotes and almost forgotten incidents, revealed and
coloured by the light of after events! This is a penalty of genius, and
it is sometimes called fame, as if fame were a gift given of the world
out of a boundless and unintelligent curiosity, and not the life-record
of work achieved. It is easier to collect ana and to make them into the
patchwork pattern of a life than to read the character of the man in his
writings; and patchwork, of necessity, has more of colour than the
homespun web of a peasant-poet.

Burns has suffered sorely at the hands of the anecdote-monger. One great
feature of his poems is their perfect sincerity. He pours out his soul
in song; tells the tale of his loves, his