are happy to hear them from their daughters' lips. And
he, too, is the Poet of their friendships. At stanzas instinct with
blythe and cordial amities, more brotherly the grasp of peasant's in
peasant's toil-hardened hands! The kindliness of their nature, not
chilled, though oppressed with care, how ready at his bidding--at the
repeated air of a few exquisite but unsought-for words of his--to start
up all alive! He is the Poet of all their humanities. His Daisy has made
all the flowers of Scotland dear. His moorland has its wild inhabitants,
whose cry is sweet. For sake of the old dumb fellow-servant which his
farmer gratefully addresses on entering on another year of labour, how
many of its kind have been fed or spared? In the winter storm 'tis
useless to think of the sailor on his slippery shrouds; but the "outland
eerie cattle" he teaches his feres to care for in the drifting snow. In
what jocund strains he celebrates their amusements, their recreations,
their festivals, passionately pursued with all their pith by a people in
the business of life grave and determined as if it left no hours for
play! Gait, dress, domicile, furniture, throughout all his poetry, are
Scottish as their dialect; and sometimes, in the pride of his heart, he
rejoices by such nationality to provoke some alien's smile. The sickle,
the scythe, and the flail, the spade, the mattock, and the hoe, have
been taken up more cheerfully by many a toil-worn cottar, because of the
poetry with which Burns has invested the very implements of labour. Now
and then, too, here and there peals forth the clangour of the
war-trumpet. But Burns is not, in the vulgar sense, a military poet; nor
are the Scottish, in a vulgar sense, a military people. He and they best
love tranquil scenes and the secure peace of home. They are prompt for
war, if war be needed--no more. Therefore two or three glorious strains
he has that call to the martial virtue quiescent in their bosoms--echoes
from the warfare of their ancient self-deliverance--menacings--a
prophetical _Nemo me impune lacesset_, should a future foe dare to
insult the beloved soil. So nourishes his poetry all that is tender and
all that is stern in the national character. So does it inspire his
people with pride and contentment in their own peculiar lot; and as
_that_ is at once both poetical and practical patriotism, the poet who
thus lightens and brightens it is the best of patriots.

I have been speaking of Burns