d
forced the phrases of his peasant dialect into literature, and made
them for ever classical. Large sympathy, generous enthusiasm, reckless
abandonment, fierce indignation, melting compassion, rare flashes of
moral insight, all are there. Everywhere you see the strong intellect
made alive, and driven home to the mark, by the fervid heart behind
it. And if the sight of the world's inequalities, and some natural
repining at his own obscure lot, mingled from the beginning, as (p. 193)
has been said, "some bitternesses of earthly spleen and passion with
the workings of his inspiration, and if these in the end ate deep into
the great heart they had long tormented," who that has not known his
experience may venture too strongly to condemn him?

This prevailing truthfulness of nature and of vision manifested itself
in many ways. First. In the strength of it, he interpreted the lives,
thoughts, feelings, manners of the Scottish peasantry to whom he
belonged, as they had never been interpreted before, and never can be
again. Take the poem which stands first in the Kilmarnock edition. The
Cotter's Dog, and the Laird's Dog, are, as has been often said, for
all their moralizing, true dogs in all their ways. Yet through these,
while not ceasing to be dogs, the poet represents the whole contrast
between the Cotters' lives, and their Lairds'. This old controversy,
which is ever new, between rich and poor, has never been set forth
with more humour and power. No doubt it is done from the peasant's
point of view. The virtues and hardships of the poor have full justice
done to them; the prosperity of the rich, with its accompanying
follies and faults, is not spared, perhaps it is exaggerated. The
whole is represented with an inimitably graphic hand, and just when
the caustic wit is beginning to get too biting, the edge of it is
turned by a touch of kindlier humour. The poor dog speaks of

Some gentle master,
Wha, aiblins thrang a-parliamentin,
For Britain's guid his saul indentin--

Then Caesar, the rich man's dog, replies,--

Haith, lad, ye little ken about it:
For Britain's guid!--guid faith! I doubt it.
Say rather, gaun as Premiers lead him, (p. 194)
An' saying aye or no's they bid him:
At operas an' plays parading,
Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading!
Or, may be, in a fr