I wish you would consider this Letter of mine an Answer
(as it really is) to that last of yours; and before long I will write
again and call on you then for a Reply.

What inspires me now is, that, about the time you were writing to me
about Burns and Beranger, I was thinking of them 'which was the Greater
Genius?'--I can't say; but, with all my Admiration for about a Score of
the Frenchman's almost perfect Songs, I would give all of them up for a
Score of Burns' Couplets, Stanzas, or single Lines scattered among those
quite _im_perfect Lyrics of his. Beranger, no doubt, was The _Artist_;
which still is not the highest Genius--witness Shakespeare, Dante,
AEschylus, Calderon, to the contrary. Burns assuredly had more _Passion_
than the Frenchman; which is not Genius either, but a great Part of the
Lyric Poet still. What Beranger might have been, if born and bred among
Banks, Braes, and Mountains, I cannot tell: Burns had that advantage over
him. And then the Highland Mary to love, amid the heather, as compared
to Lise the Grisette in a Parisian Suburb! Some of the old French
Virelays and _Vaux-de-vire_ come much nearer the Wild Notes of Burns, and
go to one's heart like his; Beranger never gets so far as that, I think.
One knows he will come round to his pretty _refrain_ with perfect grace;
if he were more Inspired he couldn't.

'My Love is like the red, red, Rose
That's newly sprung in June,
My Love is like the Melody
That's sweetly play'd in tune.'

and he will love his Love,

'Till a' the Seas gang Dry'

Yes--Till a' the Seas gang dry, my Dear. And then comes some weaker
stuff about Rocks melting in the Sun. All Imperfect; but that red, red
Rose has burned itself into one's silly Soul in spite of all. Do you
know that one of Burns' few almost perfect stanzas was perfect till he
added two Syllables to each alternate Line to fit it to the lovely Music
which almost excuses such a dilution of the Verse?

'Ye Banks and Braes o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom (so fresh) so fair?
Ye little Birds how can ye sing,
And I so (weary) full of care!
Thou'lt break my heart, thou little Bird,
That sings (singest so) upon the Thorn:
Thou minds me of departed days
That never shall return
(Departed never to) return.'

Now I shall tell you two things which my last Quotation has recalled to
me.

Some thirty years ago A. Tennyson went over Burns' Ground in