rful heart, and an ampler
brain, imbued with that mystery we call genius, and he stands forth
conspicuous above all her sons.

From the character I have sketched of the Scottish people, of old and at
this day, it might perhaps be expected that much of their poetry would
be of a stern, fierce, or even ferocious kind--the poetry of bloodshed
and destruction. Yet not so. Ballads enow, indeed, there are, embued
with the true warlike spirit--narrative of exploits of heroes. But many
a fragmentary verse, preserved by its own beauty, survives to prove that
gentlest poetry has ever been the produce both of heathery mountain and
broomy brae; but the names of the sweet singers are heard no more, and
the plough has gone over their graves. And they had their music too,
plaintive or dirge-like, as it sighed for the absent, or wailed for the
dead. The fragments were caught up, as they floated about in decay; and
by him, the sweetest lyrist of them all, were often revivified by a
happy word that let in a soul, or, by a few touches of his genius, the
fragment became a whole, so exquisitely moulded, that none may tell what
lines belong to Burns, and what to the poet of ancient days. They all
belong to him now, for but for him they would have perished utterly;
while his own matchless lyrics, altogether original, find the breath of
life on the lips of a people who have gotten them all by heart. What a
triumph of the divine faculty thus to translate the inarticulate
language of nature into every answering modulation of human speech! And
with such felicity, that the verse is now as national as the music!
Throughout all these exquisite songs, we see the power of an element
which we, raised by rank and education into ignorance, might not have
surmised in the mind of the people. The love-songs of Burns are
prominent in the poetry of the world by their purity. Love, truly felt
and understood, in the bosom of a Scottish peasant, has produced a crowd
of strains which are owned for the genuine and chaste language of the
passion, by highly as well as by lowly born--by cultured and by ruder
minds--that may charm in haughty saloons, not less than under
smoke-blackened roofs. Impassioned beyond all the songs of passion, yet,
in the fearless fervour of remembered transports, pure as hymeneals; and
dear, therefore, for ever to Scottish maidens in hours when hearts are
wooed and won; dear, therefore, for ever to Scottish matrons, who, at
household work,