Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/165

Rh position, or correction of his poetry, he never suffered the judgment, even of his most respectable friends, to dictate to him. This line, in one of his poems, ("When I look back on prospects drear") was criticised; but he would not condescend either to reply to the criticism, or to alter the expression. Not a few of his smaller pieces are sufficiently trivial, vulgar, and hackneyed in the thought—are such as the pride of genius should have disdained to write, or, at least, to publish; but there is reason to believe that he despised such pieces, even while he wrote and published them; that it was rather in regard to the effects they had already upon hearers and readers, than from any overweening opinion of their intrinsic worth, he suffered them to be printed. His wit is always dignified: he is not a merry-andrew in a motley coat, sporting before you for your diversion; but a hero, or a philosopher, deigning to admit you to witness his relaxations, still exercising the great energies of his soul, and little caring, at the moment, whether you do, or do not, cordially sympathise with his feelings.

His poems may be all distributed into the two classes of pastorals, and pieces upon common life and manners. In the former class, I include all those in which rural imagery, and the manners and sentiments of rustics are chiefly described: in the latter, I would comprehend his epigrams, epistles, and, in short, all those pieces in which the imagery and sentiments are drawn from the condition and appearances of common life, without any particular reference to the country. It is in the first class that the most excellent of his poems are certainly to be found. Those few pieces which he seems to have attempted in the Delia Crusca style, appear to me to be the least commendable of all his writings; he usually employs those forms of versification which have been used chiefly by the former writers of poetry in the Scottish dialect, and by some of the elder English poets. His phraseology is evidently drawn from those books of English poetry which were in his hands, from the writings of former Scottish poets, and from those unwritten stores of the Scottish dialect, which became known to him, in the conversation of his fellow peasants. Some other late writers in the Scottish dialect seem to think, that not to write English is certainly to write Scottish ; Burns, avoiding this error, hardly ever transgressed the propriety of English grammar, except in compliance with the long accustomed variations of the genuine Scottish dialect.

From the preceding detail of the particulars of this poet's life, the reader will naturally and justly infer him to have been an honest, proud, warm-hearted man; of high passions, and sound understanding, and a vigorous and excursive imagination. He was never known to descend to any act of deliberate meanness. In Dumfries he retained many respectable friends, even to the last. It may be doubted whether he has not, by his writings, exercised a greater power over the minds of men, and, by consequence, on their conduct, upon their happiness and misery, and upon the general system of life, than has been exercised by any half dozen of the most eminent statesmen of the present age. The power of the statesman is but shadowy, as far as it acts upon externals alone: the power of the writer of genius subdues the heart and the understanding, and having thus made the very spring of action its own, through them moulds almost all life and nature at its pleasure. Burns has not failed to command one remarkable sort of homage, such as is never paid but to great original genius—a crowd of poetasters started up to imitate him, by writing verses as he had done, in the Scottish dialect; but, ''O imitatores! servum pecus!'' To persons to whom the Scottish dialect, and the customs and manners of rural life in Scotland have no charms, I shall possibly appear to have said too much about Burns: by those who