incident or historical tradition, in which a romantic poet with a turn for folk-lore might dig for treasure. Their best service was to show that the past is still alive in the present; and that the theme which is on every lip, the melody which rings in every ear, only awaits the touch of genius to become that which has the double charm of immemorial antiquity and of absolutely spontaneous individuality. It would be ridiculous to say that Burns would not have sung without prompting from Percy. But it may well be that the vogue of Percy, probably greater around the Border than in any other part of the island, gave him confidence; and it is certain that the popularity of the Reliques did much to win him an immediate hearing. In any case, Burns is the supreme instance of all that might be drawn from the fountain of popular poetry, first unsealed by Percy. The fascination of the theme and utterance of the country side, the sense that a poet must sing in the speech of his birth, in the language which comes charged for himself and others with memories of the home and of the vanished past, the charm of the savour of the soil-all these things were implicit in the labours of Percy; and all come to the surface in the poetry of Burns. It is here that Burns is most closely bound up with the inner movement of his age. In other respects it is, in the main, the vaguer elements of that movement which he embodied. Here he is, in the strictest sense of the term, a romantic poet.

The other point in which he approaches-approaches, however, without entering the inner circle

His treatment of the supernatural.

of Romance is his treatment of the supernatural. But here the approach is made with many reserves; it is made, we may almost say, under protest. In Tam o' Shanter, which he regarded as "his standard performance in the poetical line," and again in Halloween, he takes up the theme, or something like the theme, which Collins had suggested to Home. But he does so with a difference. Vividly as his spirit world is painted, it is clear that what really attracted him was not so much the "superstitions" themselves as the fears and hopes, the desires and terrors, which they kindled in the breast of those who held them. The beliefs themselves are treated with jesting tolerance, if not with a dash of sarcasm. It is the trepidations of the lovers in the one poem, the lusts and alarms of drunken Tam in the other, on which the whole strength of the poet is put forth. Το Coleridge or Bürger the romance of these pieces would have seemed a sadly half-hearted performance, or rather no romance at all. The same is true of the Address to the Deil. From the first, the hero of this poem is the being not of Biblical authority, but of popular belief; not the Devil, but the Deil. From the first therefore, Burns being what he was, the belief in question is little more than a half belief. Even that half belief is quizzed by the poet in one bantering reference or comparison after another. And at the end it is fairly swept away by a burst of human fellow-feeling which, irresistible as it is, has certainly nothing to say to the gravities of Romance.

In the dramatic side of these beliefs, or half beliefs, in their power to stir emotion which would otherwise have slept, Burns took the keenest interest. But his own temper was too sceptical, his own humour too free from artifice, to allow him even that "willing suspension of disbelief" which is needful to such effects as were sought and attained by Coleridge. And this points directly to the real source of Burns' power, the true field of his genius. The loves and hates of man, his follies and his struggles, these are his true theme-these, and the instinct which drives man outwards into nature, which prompts him to seek the reflection of his own passions and his own destiny in the changing face of nature.

In all these things Burns stands out sharply from his immediate forerunners. There is a fire, a passion in his poetry to which all of them, with the exception perhaps of Collins, were strangers. There is the distinctively lyric note which is heard in none of them, except Collins.

nature.

Of nature.

This makes itself felt, firstly, in his presentment of He has few or no descriptions. The nearest approach to one is to be found in The Brigs of Ayr; and there the dramatic form in which it is cast affords an escape from the coldness which is the danger besetting that kind of poetry. In place of description, we either have a few vivid touches which suggest to the imagination all that the poet deliberately withholds from the eye; or the scenery becomes nothing more than a setting for the human passion which is the real

theme of the poem,—its details furnish the imagery in which that passion is expressed. Of the former a notable instance occurs in the opening stanza of A Winter Night. Examples of the latter abound in the songs; Of a' the Airts, for instance, or The Lea Rig or The Birks of Aberfeldy. But the most striking perhaps is in one of the few dramatic ballads, which is also one of the finest poems, written by Burns

"The wan moon is setting behind the white wave,

And time is setting with me, oh!"

1

Since the appearance of The Seasons, the set description had been the stock-in-trade of all poets of nature. It had ruled the market in Britain; it had made the tour of Europe. It had been assailed by the greatest critic of the time; but with no visible effect. Burns, if not the first, was among the first to break the spell of this questionable fashion. A few years before his death, it was revived, strangely enough, in the boyish poetry of Wordsworth. But it cannot be said ever to have regained its former hold. Burns had shown a more excellent way; and that way, as soon as he had come to his true self, Wordsworth was to follow.

In his feeling for living things, Burns was to some extent anticipated by Cowper. But here too his originality is evident. If Cowper advances upon Gray, so certainly does Burns on Cowper. With all his "sylvan tenderness," Cowper does not rise to 1 Lessing, Laokoon, xvii.

the same instinct of brotherhood with the beasts, nor does he paint their fears and hopes with the same human pathos, that Burns pours into The Auld Mare Maggie, or Poor Maillie, or the Field - mouse. So completely does he throw himself into their life that, in the last of these poems, the very moral, which should by every rule of prescription have been addressed to man, is spoken in consolation to the houseless "beastie," whose panic he interprets by his own. dangers and apprehensions.

Nor is Burns less original in his poetry of man. Good-fellowship, satire, friendship, liberty, and love

0f man.

these are his main themes; and he handles each of them with a touch entirely his own. The first of these, it is obvious, gives less scope than the others to a poet's genius. The secret of Burns' success is that he faced this frankly, and treated his subject in the simplest, broadest, and consequently in the coarsest, manner. The open

ing scene of Tam o' Shanter, and still more The Jolly Beggars, give us the very devilment of lighthearted revelry; revelry naked and not ashamed, and for that reason both more human and more healthy than if it had skulked behind the traditional innuendoes of bacchanalian verse. The triumph is won because the poet grasps the nettle boldly, or rather because he refuses to recognise that it is a nettle at all.

This side of Burns stands out strongly from the general trend of poetry in his time. The contrast maliciously drawn by Hazlitt holds of others besides

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