ardly more tenable. The
religion described by Burns in _The Cotter's Saturday Night_ is, it
should be remembered, his father's faith, not his own. The fundamental
truths of natural religion, faith in God and in immortality, amid (p. 190)
sore trials of heart, he no doubt clung to, and has forcibly
expressed. But there is nothing in his poems or in his letters which
goes beyond sincere deism--nothing which is in any way distinctively
Christian.

Even were his teaching of religion much fuller than it is, one
essential thing is still wanting. Before men can accept any one as a
religious teacher, they not unreasonably expect that his practice
should in some measure bear out his teaching. It was not as an
authority on such matters that Burns ever regarded himself. In his
_Bard's Epitaph_, composed ten years before his death, he took a far
truer and humbler measure of himself than any of his critics or
panegyrists have done:---

The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn and wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow
And softer flame;
But thoughtless folly laid him low,
And stained his name.

Reader, attend!--whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flight beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole,
In low pursuit;
Know, prudent, cautious self-control
Is wisdom's root.

"A confession," says Wordsworth, "at once devout, poetical, and
human--a history in the shape of a prophecy."

Leaving the details of his personal story, and--

Each unquiet theme,
Where gentlest judgments may misdeem,

it is a great relief to turn to the bequest that he has left to (p. 191)
the world in his poetry. How often has one been tempted to wish that
we had known as little of the actual career of Burns as we do of the
life of Shakespeare, or even of Homer, and had been left to read his
mind and character only by the light of his works! That poetry, though
a fragmentary, is still a faithful transcript of what was best in the
man; and though his stream of song contains some sediment we could
wish away, yet as a whole, how vividly, clearly, sunnily it flows, how
far the good preponderates over the evil.

What that good is, must now be briefly said. To take his earliest
productions first, his poem