poetical
author, a first-rate picture of the view either from Ben Lomond,
Schehallion, Ben Cruachan, or Ben Nevis.

After all, Burns was more influenced by some other characteristics of
Scotland than he was by its scenery. There was, first, its romantic
history. _That_ had not then been separated, as it has since been, from
the mists of fable, but lay exactly in that twilight point of view best
adapted for arousing the imagination. To the eye of Burns, as it glared
back into the past, the history of his country seemed intensely
poetical--including the line of early kings who pass over the stage of
Boece' and Buchanan's story as their brethren over the magic glass of
Macbeth's witches--equally fantastic and equally false--the dark
tragedy of that terrible thane of Glammis and Cawdor--the deeds of
Wallace and Bruce--the battle of Flodden--and the sad fate of Queen
Mary; and from most of these themes he drew an inspiration which could
scarcely have been conceived to reside even in them. On Wallace, Bruce,
and Queen Mary, his mind seems to have brooded with peculiar
intensity--on the two former, because they were patriots; and on the
latter, because she was a beautiful woman; and his allusions to them
rank with the finest parts in his or any poetry. He seemed especially
adapted to be the poet-laureate of Wallace--a modern edition, somewhat
improved, of the broad, brawny, ragged bard who actually, it is
probable, attended in the train of Scotland's patriot hero, and whose
constant occupation it was to change the gold of his achievements into
the silver of song. Scottish manners, too, as well as history, exerted a
powerful influence on Scotland's peasant-poet. They were then far more
peculiar than now, and had only been faintly or partially represented by
previous poets. Thus, the christening of the _wean_, with all its
ceremony and all its mirth--Hallowe'en, with its "rude awe and
laughter"--the "Rockin'"--the "Brooze"--the Bridal--and a hundred other
intensely Scottish and very old customs, were all ripe and ready for the
poet, and many of them he has treated, accordingly, with consummate
felicity and genius. It seems almost as if the _final cause_ of their
long-continued existence were connected with the appearance, in due
time, of one who was to extract their finest essence, and to embalm them
for ever in his own form of ideal representation.

Burns, too, doubtless derived much from previous poets. This is a common
case