iration of Nature,--but in a purely imaginary tale. Suddenly Burns
appeared: and the ideal seemed incarnated in the living present. The
Scottish bard was introduced to the world by his first admirers as "a
heaven-taught ploughman, of humble unlettered station," whose "simple
strains, artless and unadorned, seem to flow without effort from the
native feelings of the heart"; and as "a signal instance of true and
uncultivated genius." The real Burns, though indeed a genius of song, was
far better read than the expectant world wished to believe, particularly
in those whom he called his "bosom favorites," the sentimentalists
Mackenzie and Sterne; and his sense of rhythm and melody had been trained
by his emulation of earlier Scotch lyricists, whose lilting cadences flow
towards him as highland rills to the gathering torrent. Sung to the notes
of his native tunes, and infused with the local color of Scotch life, the
sentimental themes assumed the freshness of novelty. Giving a new ardor
to revolutionary tendencies,--Burns revolted against the orthodoxy of the
"Auld Lichts," depicting its representatives as ludicrously hypocritical.
He protested against distinctions founded on birth or rank, as in _A
Man's a Man for A' That_; and, on the other hand, he idealized the homely
feelings and manners of the "virtuous populace" in his immortal _Cotter's
Saturday Night_. He scorned academic learning, and protested that true
inspiration was rather to be found in "ae spark o' Nature's fire,"--or at
the nearest tavern:

Leese me on drink! It gies us mair
Than either school or college.

Like Sterne, who boasted that his pen governed him, Burns praised and
affected the impromptu:

But how the subject theme may gang,
Let time or chance determine;
Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
Perhaps turn out a sermon.

His Muse was to be the mood of the moment. Herein he brought to
fulfillment the sentimental desire for the liberation of the emotions;
but his work, taken as a whole, can scarcely be said to vindicate the
faith that the emotions, once freed, would manifest instinctive purity.
At his almost unrivalled best, he can sing in the sweetest strains the
raptures or pathos of innocent youthful love, as in _Sweet Afton_ or _To
Mary in Heaven_; but straightway sinking from that elevation of feeling
to the depths of vulgarity or grossness, he will chant with equal zest
and skill the indulgence of the animal appetites.[1] He hails the j