s best of a', [all]
Her reputation is complete,
And fair without a flaw.

She dresses aye sae clean and neat,
Both decent and genteel;
And then there's something in her gait
Gars ony dress look weel. [Makes]

A gaudy dress and gentle air
May slightly touch the heart,
But it's innocence and modesty
That polishes the dart.

'Tis this in Nelly pleases me,
'Tis this enchants my soul!
For absolutely in my breast
She reigns without control.

Since there may still be readers who suppose that Burns was a mere
unsophisticated singer, without power of self-criticism, it may be as
well to insert here a passage from a Commonplace Book written in 1783,
ten years after the composition of the song.

_Criticism on the Foregoing Song_

"Lest my works should be thought below Criticism; or meet with a
Critic who, perhaps, will not look on them with so candid and
favorable an eye; I am determined to criticise them myself.

"The first distich of the first stanza is quite too much in the
flimsy strain of our ordinary street ballads; and on the other
hand, the second distich is too much in the other extreme. The
expression is a little awkward, and the sentiment too serious.
Stanza the second I am well pleased with; and I think it conveys a
fine idea of that amiable part of the Sex--the agreeables, or what
in our Scotch dialect we call a sweet sonsy Lass. The third Stanza
has a little of the flimsy turn in it; and the third line has
rather too serious a cast. The fourth Stanza is a very indifferent
one; the first line is, indeed, all in the strain of the second
Stanza, but the rest is mostly an expletive. The thoughts in the
fifth Stanza come fairly up to my favorite idea [of] a sweet sonsy
Lass. The last line, however, halts a little. The same sentiments
are kept up with equal spirit and tenderness in the sixth Stanza,
but the second and fourth lines ending with short syllables hurts
the whole. The seventh Stanza has several minute faults; but I
remember I composed it in a wild enthusiasm of passion, and to
this hour I never recollect it but my heart melts, and my blood
sallies at the remembrance."

In spite of the early start in poetry given him by Nelly Kilpatrick,
he did not produce more than a few pieces of permanent value d