Page:Tales and sketches.djvu/13

Rh there the worst productions of Burns are no doubt still rife, and working as a deadly poison. Even to a superior class of working-men, who are halting between two opinions, there is danger from the very mixture of good and evil in the character and writings of the poet. They cannot for- get that he who wrote " The cock may craw, the day may daw, yet still we'll taste the barley bree," wrote likewise the immortal song, " A man ; s a man for a ? that ; " and they determine, or are in danger of determining, to follow the object of their worship with no halting step. Doubtless, political creed and the accidents of birth do still colour the individual estimate of Burns and his writings. It is but of late that we have seen society torn, on occasion of the centenary of the poet, by conflicting opinions as to the propriety of observing it; and many would fain have it supposed that the religious and anti-religious world were ranged on opposite sides. But it was not so. There were thoroughly good and religious men, self-made, who could not forget that Burns had been the champion of their order, and had helped to win for them respect by the power of his genius ; while there were others — religious men of old family — who could remember nothing but his faults. I remember spending one or two evenings about that time in the society of a well-born, earnestly religious, and highly estimable gentleman, who reprobated Burns, and scoffed at the idea that a man could be a man for a' that. He mi^ht