d compare of all the
self-taught poets. Now there can be no explanation whatever of the
occurrence of a man of genius at a given time and place. For anything we
can say, Burns was an accident; but given the genius, his relation was
clear, and the genius enabled him to recognise it with unequalled
clearness. Burns became, as he has continued, the embodiment of the
Scottish genius. Scottish patriotic feeling animates some of his
noblest poems, and whether as an original writer--and no one could be
more original--or as adapting and revising the existing poetry, he
represents the essential spirit of the Scottish peasant. I need not
point out that this implies certain limitations, and some failings worse
than limitation. But it implies also the spontaneous and masculine
vigour which we may call poetic inspiration of the highest kind. He had
of course read the English authors such as Addison and Pope. So far as
he tried to imitate the accepted form he was apt to lose his fire. He is
inspired when he has a nation behind him and is the mouthpiece of
sentiments, traditional, but also living and vigorous. He represents,
therefore, a new period. The lyrical poetry seemed to have died out in
England. It suddenly comes to life in Scotland and reaches unsurpassable
excellence within certain limits, because a man of true genius rises to
utter the emotions of a people in their most natural form without
bothering about canons of literary criticism. The society and the
individual are in thorough harmony, and that, I take it, is the
condition of really great literature at all times.

This must suggest my concluding moral. The watchword of every literary
school may be brought under the formula 'Return to Nature': though
'Nature' receives different interpretations. To be natural, on the one
hand, is to be sincere and spontaneous; to utter the emotions natural to
you in the forms which are also natural, so far as the accepted canons
are not rules imposed by authority but have been so thoroughly
assimilated as to express your own instinctive impulses. On the other
side, it means that the literature must be produced by the class which
embodies the really vital and powerful currents of thought which are
moulding society. The great author must have a people behind him; utter
both what he really thinks and feels and what is thought and felt most
profoundly by his contemporaries. As the literature ceases to be truly
representative, and adheres to