the warnings, to which his experience gives
an unhappy force, against transgressions of Temperance. In the "Epistle to
a Young Friend," the shrewdest advice is blended with exhortations
appealing to the highest motive, that which transcends the calculation of
consequences, and bids us walk in the straight path from the feeling of
personal honour, and "for the glorious privilege of being independent."
Burns, like Dante, "loved well because he hated, hated wickedness that
hinders loving," and this feeling, as in the lines--"Dweller in yon dungeon
dark," sometimes breaks bounds; but his calmer moods are better represented
by the well-known passages in the "Epistle to Davie," in which he preaches
acquiescence in our lot, and a cheerful acceptance of our duties in the
sphere where we are placed. This _philosophie douce_, never better sung by
Horace, is the prevailing refrain of our author's _Songs_. On these there
are few words to add to the acclaim of a century. They have passed into the
air we breathe; they are so real that they seem things rather than words,
or, nearer still, living beings. They have taken all hearts, because they
are the breath of his own; not polished cadences, but utterances as direct
as laughter or tears. Since Sappho loved and sang, there has been no such
national lyrist as Burns. Fine ballads, mostly anonymous, existed in
Scotland previous to his time; and shortly before a few authors had
produced a few songs equal to some of his best. Such are Alexander Ross's
"Wooed and Married," Lowe's "Mary's Dream," "Auld Robin Gray," "The Land o'
the Leal" and the two versions of "The Flowers o' the Forest." From these
and many of the older pieces in Ramsay's collection, Burns admits to have
derived copious suggestions and impulses. He fed on the past literature of
his country as Chaucer on the old fields of English thought, and--

"Still the elements o' sang,
In formless jumble, right and wrang,
Went floating in his brain."

But he gave more than he received; he brought forth an hundredfold; he
summed up the stray material of the past, and added so much of his own that
one of the most conspicuous features of his lyrical genius is its variety
in new paths. Between the first of war songs, composed in a storm on a
moor, and the pathos of "Mary in Heaven," he has made every chord in our
northern life to vibrate. The distance from "Duncan Gray" to "Auld Lang
Syne" is nearly as great as that from Falstaff to A