oetry, which far
outnumber its blemishes. Of these last it is unnecessary to speak;
they are too obvious, and whatever is gross, readers can of themselves
pass by.

Burns's most considerable poems, as distinct from his songs, were
almost all written before he went to Edinburgh. There is, however, one
memorable exception. _Tam o' Shanter_, as we have seen, belongs to
Ellisland days. Most of his earlier poems were entirely realistic, a
transcript of the men and women and scenes he had seen and known, only
lifted a very little off the earth, only very slightly idealized. But
in _Tam o' Shanter_ he had let loose his powers upon the materials of
past experiences, and out of them he shaped a tale which was a pure
imaginative creation. In no other instance, except perhaps in _The
Jolly Beggars_, had he done this; and in that cantata, if the genius
is equal, the materials are so coarse, and the sentiment so gross, as
to make it, for all its dramatic power, decidedly offensive. It is
strange what very opposite judgments have been formed of the intrinsic
merit of _Tam o' Shanter_. Mr. Carlyle thinks that it might have (p. 202)
been written "all but quite as well by a man, who, in place of genius,
had only possessed talent; that it is act so much a poem, as a piece
of sparkling rhetoric; the heart of the story still lies hard and
dead." On the other hand, Sir Walter Scott has recorded this verdict:
"In the inimitable tale of _Tam o' Shanter_, Burns has left us
sufficient evidence of his abilities to combine the ludicrous with the
awful and even the horrible. No poet, with the exception of
Shakespeare, ever possessed the power of exciting the most varied and
discordant emotions with such rapid transitions. His humorous
description of death in the poem on Dr. Hornbrook, borders on the
terrific; and the witches' dance in the Kirk of Alloway is at once
ludicrous and horrible." Sir Walter, I believe, is right, and the
world has sided with him in his judgment about _Tam o' Shanter_.
Nowhere in British literature, out of Shakespeare, is there to be
found so much of the power of which Scott speaks--that of combining in
rapid transition almost contradictory emotions--if we except perhaps
one of Scott's own highest creations, the tale of Wandering Willie, in
_Redgauntlet_.

On the songs of Burns a volume might be written, but a few sentences
must here suffice. It is in his songs that his soul comes out fullest,
freest, brightest; it is