Meanwhile, whether as a man, a husband, or a poet, his steps
led downward. He knew, knew bitterly, that the best was out

of him; he refused to make another volume, for he felt that
it would be a disappointment; he grew petulantly alive to

criticism, unless he was sure it reached him from a friend.
For his songs, he would take nothing; they were all that he

could do; the proposed Scotch play, the proposed series of
Scotch tales in verse, all had gone to water; and in a fling

of pain and disappointment, which is surely noble with the
nobility of a viking, he would rather stoop to borrow than to

accept money for these last and inadequate efforts of his
muse. And this desperate abnegation rises at times near to

the height of madness; as when he pretended that he had not
written, but only found and published, his immortal AULD LANG

SYNE. In the same spirit he became more scrupulous as an
artist; he was doing so little, he would fain do that little

well; and about two months before his death, he asked Thomson
to send back all his manuscripts for revisal, saying that he

would rather write five songs to his taste than twice that
number otherwise. The battle of his life was lost; in

forlorn efforts to do well, in desperate submissions to evil,
the last years flew by. His temper is dark and explosive,

launching epigrams, quarrelling with his friends, jealous of
young puppy officers. He tries to be a good father; he

boasts himself a libertine. Sick, sad, and jaded, he can
refuse no occasion of temporary pleasure, no opportunity to

shine; and he who had once refused the invitations of lords
and ladies is now whistled to the inn by any curious

stranger. His death (July 21, 1796), in his thirty-seventh
year, was indeed a kindly dispensation. It is the fashion to

say he died of drink; many a man has drunk more and yet lived
with reputation, and reached a good age. That drink and

debauchery helped to destroy his constitution, and were the
means of his unconscioussuicide, is doubtless true; but he

had failed in life, had lost his power of work, and was
already married to the poor, unworthy, patient Jean, before

he had shown his inclination to convivial nights, or at least
before that inclination had become dangerous either to his

health or his self-respect. He had trifled with life, and
must pay the penalty. He had chosen to be Don Juan, he had

grasped at temporary pleasures, and substantial happiness and
solid industry had passed him by. He died of being Robert

Burns, and there is no levity in such a statement of the
case; for shall we not, one and all, deserve a similar

epitaph?
WORKS.

The somewhat cruel necessity which has lain upon me
throughout this paper only to touch upon those points in the

life of Burns where correction or amplification seemed
desirable, leaves me little opportunity to speak of the works

which have made his name so famous. Yet, even here, a few
observations seem necessary.

At the time when the poet made his appearance and great first
success, his work was remarkable in two ways. For, first, in

an age when poetry had become abstract and conventional,
instead of continuing to deal with shepherds, thunderstorms,

and personifications, he dealt with the actual circumstances
of his life, however matter-of-fact and sordid these might

be. And, second, in a time when English versification was
particularly stiff, lame, and feeble, and words were used

with ultra-academical timidity, he wrote verses that were
easy, racy, graphic, and forcible, and used language with

absolute tact and courage as it seemed most fit to give a
clear impression. If you take even those English authors

whom we know Burns to have most admired and studied, you will
see at once that he owed them nothing but a warning. Take

Shenstone, for instance, and watch that elegant author as he
tries to grapple with the facts of life. He has a

description, I remember, of a gentleman engaged in sliding or
walking on thin ice, which is a little miracle of

incompetence. You see my memory fails me, and I positively
cannot recollect whether his hero was sliding or walking; as

though a writer should describe a skirmish, and the reader,
at the end, be still uncertain whether it were a charge of

cavalry or a slow and stubborn advance of foot. There could
be no such ambiguity in Burns; his work is at the opposite

pole from such indefinite and stammering performances; and a
whole lifetime passed in the study of Shenstone would only

lead a man further and further from writing the ADDRESS TO A
LOUSE. Yet Burns, like most great artists, proceeded from a

school and continued a tradition; only the school and
tradition were Scotch, and not English. While the English

language was becoming daily more pedantic and inflexible, and
English letters more colourless and slack, there was another

dialect in the sister country, and a different school of
poetry tracing its descent, through King James I., from

Chaucer. The dialect alone accounts for much; for it was
then written colloquially, which kept it fresh and supple;

and, although not shaped for heroic flights, it was a direct
and vivid medium for all that had to do with social life.

Hence, whenever Scotch poets left their laborious imitations
of bad English verses, and fell back on their own dialect,

their style would kindle, and they would write of their
convivial and somewhat gross existences with pith and point.

In Ramsay, and far more in the poor lad Fergusson, there was
mettle, humour, literary courage, and a power of saying what

they wished to say definitely and brightly, which in the
latter case should have justified great anticipations. Had

Burns died at the same age as Fergusson, he would have left
us literally nothing worth remark. To Ramsay and to

Fergusson, then, he was indebted in a very uncommon degree,
not only following their tradition and using their measures,

but directly and avowedly imitating their pieces. The same
tendency to borrow a hint, to work on some one else's

foundation, is notable in Burns from first to last, in the
period of song-writing as well as in that of the early poems;

and strikes one oddly in a man of such deep originality, who
left so strong a print on all he touched, and whose work is

so greatly distinguished by that character of "inevitability"
which Wordsworth denied to Goethe.

When we remember Burns's obligations to his predecessors, we
must never forget his immense advances on them. They had

already "discovered" nature; but Burns discovered poetry - a
higher and more intense way of thinking of the things that go

to make up nature, a higher and more ideal key of words in
which to speak of them. Ramsay and Fergusson excelled at

making a popular - or shall we say vulgar? - sort of society
verses, comical and prosaic, written, you would say, in

taverns while a supper party waited for its laureate's word;
but on the appearance of Burns, this coarse and laughing

literature was touched to finer issues, and learned gravity
of thought and natural pathos.

What he had gained from his predecessors was a direct,
speaking style, and to walk on his own feet instead of on

academical stilts. There was never a man of letters with
more absolute command of his means; and we may say of him,

without excess, that his style was his slave. Hence that
energy of epithet, so concise and telling, that a foreigner

is tempted to explain it by some special richness or aptitude
in the dialect he wrote. Hence that Homeric justice and

completeness of description which gives us the very
physiognomy of nature, in body and detail, as nature is.

Hence, too, the unbrokenliterary quality of his best pieces,
which keeps him from any slip into the weariful trade of

word-painting, and presents everything, as everything should
be presented by the art of words, in a clear, continuous

medium of thought. Principal Shairp, for instance, gives us
a paraphrase of one tough verse of the original; and for

those who know the Greek poets only by paraphrase, this has
the very quality they are accustomed to look for and admire