experiences we owe not only those excellent drinking songs,
_John Barleycorn_ and _Willie Brewed a Peck o' Maut_, but the headlong
fun of _Tam O'Shanter_, the visions, grotesquely terrible, of _Death and
Dr. Hornbook_, and the dramatic humor of the _Jolly Beggars_. Cowper had
celebrated "the cup which cheers but not inebriates." Burns sang the
praises of _Scotch Drink_. Cowper was a stranger to Burns's high animal
spirits, and his robust enjoyment of life. He had affections, but no
passions. At Mauchline, Burns, whose irregularities did not escape the
censure of the kirk, became involved, through his friendship with Gavin
Hamilton, in the controversy between the Old Light and New Light clergy.
His _Holy Fair_, _Holy Tulzie_, _Twa Herds_, _Holy Willie's Prayer_, and
_Address to the Unco Gude_, are satires against bigotry and hypocrisy.
But in spite of the rollicking profanity of his language, and the
violence of his rebound against the austere religion of Scotland, Burns
was at bottom deeply impressible by religious ideas, as may be seen from
his _Prayer under the Pressure of Violent Anguish_, and _Prayer in
Prospect of Death_.

His farm turned out a failure, and he was on the eve of sailing for
Jamaica, when the favor with which his volume of poems was received
stayed his departure, and turned his steps to Edinburgh. There the
peasant poet was lionized for a winter season by the learned and polite
society of the Scotch capital, with results in the end not altogether
favorable to Burns's best interests. For when society finally turned the
cold shoulder on him he had to go back to farming again, carrying with
him a bitter sense of injustice and neglect. He leased a farm at
Ellisland, in 1788, and some friends procured his appointment as
exciseman for his district. But poverty, disappointment, irregular
habits, and broken health clouded his last years, and brought him to an
untimely death at the age of thirty-seven. He continued, however, to
pour forth songs of unequaled sweetness and force. "The man sank," said
Coleridge, "but the poet was bright to the last."

Burns is the best of British song-writers. His songs are singable; they
are not merely lyrical poems. They were meant to be sung, and they are
sung. They were mostly set to old Scottish airs, and sometimes they were
built up from ancient fragments of anonymous popular poetry, a chorus,
or stanza, or even a single line. Such are, for example, _Auld Lang
Syne_, _My