f the comic and the pathetic. Beyond Chaucer he
had passion and the power of rendering it, so that he might have
reached greater tragic depth, as he surpassed him in lyric intensity.

As it is, however, Chaucer stands alone as a story-teller, for _Tam o'
Shanter_ is with Burns an isolated achievement. There are three
distinct elements in the work--narrative, descriptive, and reflective.
The first can hardly be overpraised. We are made to feel the
reluctance of the hero to abandon the genial inn fireside, with its
warmth and uncritical companionship, for the bitter ride with a sulky
sullen dame at the end of it; the rage of the thunderstorm, as with
lowered head and fast-held bonnet the horseman plunges through it; the
growing sense of terror as, past scene after scene of ancient horror,
he approaches the ill-famed ruin. Then suddenly the mood changes.
Emboldened by his potations, Tam faces the astounding infernal revelry
with unabashed curiosity, which rises and rises till, in a pitch of
enthusiastic admiration for Cutty-Sark, he loses all discretion and
brings the "hellish legion" after him pell-mell. We reach the
serio-comic catastrophe breathless but exhilarated.

The descriptive background of this galloping adventure is skilfully
indicated. Each scene--the ale-house, the storm, the lighted church,
the witches' dance--is sketched in a dozen lines, every stroke
distinct and telling. Even the three lines indicating what waits the
hero at home is an adequate picture. Though incidental, these
vignettes add substantially to what the descriptive poems have told us
of the environment, real and imaginative, in which the poet had been
reared.

The value of the reflective element is more mixed. The most quoted
passage, that beginning

"But pleasures are like poppies spread,"

can only be regretted. With its literacy similes, its English, its
artificial diction, it is a patch of cheap silk upon honest homespun.
But the other pieces of interspersed comment are all admirable. The
ironic apostrophes--to Tam for neglecting his wife's warnings; to
shrewish wives, consoling them for their husband's deafness to advice;
to John Barleycorn, on the transient courage he inspires; to Tam
again, when tragedy seems imminent--are all in perfect tone, and do
much to add the element of drollery that mixes so delightfully with
the weirdness of the scene. And like the other elements in the poem
they are commendably short, for Burns nearl