do with the exercise of energies,
which produce deeds that are decided, together with the operation of
passions and feelings which are borne into excess. These are more easily
depicted than the gentler sentiments and feelings, together with the
lights and shades of national character which constitute the materials
of song. Nor will strains which set forth the actions of mankind as
operating in excess, ever be so popular as simple song. Though
communities are liable to periods of excitement, this is not their
natural condition. Songs founded upon such, may be popular while the
excitement lasts, but not much longer. Philosophers and inquiring
individuals may revert to and dwell upon them, but the generality of the
people will renounce them. Those who linger over them, will do so
through a disposition to ascertain the causes which gave them birth, and
how far these were natural in the circumstances. He who sings, feels
that the same ardour cannot be re-awakened; and the sentiments which the
poet has expressed become as things that are false and foolish.

Nearly all the poems of Burns proceed on the same principles upon which
popular song proceeds. He approved himself considerably original and
singularly interesting, by taking up and saying, in the language best
suited for the purpose, what his countrymen had either already, to one
extent or other, thought and felt, or were, at his suggestion, fully
prepared to think and feel. It is thus that song becomes the truest
history of a people; they, properly speaking, have rarely any other
historian than the poet. History, in its stateliness, does not deign to
dwell upon their habits, their customs and manners, and, therefore,
cannot unfold their usual modes of thinking and feeling; it only notices
those more anomalous emergencies when the ebullitions of high passion
and excitement prevail; and such not being the natural condition of any
people, a true representation of their real character is not given. If
song equally tends to strengthen the bonds of nationality, it is also
that from which the true cast of a land's inhabitants can be gathered.
From habits and training, together with the native shades of peculiar
character, there is in human nature great variety; so, consequently, is
there also in song, for perhaps it might be difficult to fix upon one of
these peculiarities, whether of outward manner or inward disposition,
which song has not taken up and illustrated in its own w