An' slypet owre.

To paraphrase this, "Thou didst never fret, or plunge and kick, but
thou wouldest have whisked thy old tail, and spread abroad thy large
chest, with pith and power, till hillocks, where the earth was filled
with tough-rooted plants, would have given forth a cracking sound, and
the clods fallen gently over." The latter part of this paraphrase is
taken from Chambers. What pure English words could have rendered these
things as compactly and graphically?

Of _The Cotter's Saturday Night_ it is hardly needful to speak. As a
work of art, it is by no means at Burns's highest level. The metre was
not native to him. It contains some lines that are feeble, whole
stanzas that are heavy. But as Lockhart has said, in words already
quoted, there is none of his poems that does such justice to the (p. 196)
better nature that was originally in him. It shows how Burns could
reverence the old national piety, however little he may have been able
to practise it. It is the more valuable for this, that it is almost
the only poem in which either of our two great national poets has
described Scottish character on the side of that grave, deep, though
undemonstrative reverence, which has been an intrinsic element in it.

No wonder the peasantry of Scotland have loved Burns as perhaps never
people loved a poet. He not only sympathized with the wants, the
trials, the joys and sorrows of their obscure lot, but he interpreted
these to themselves, and interpreted them to others, and this too in
their own language made musical, and glorified by genius. He made the
poorest ploughman proud of his station and his toil, since Robbie
Burns had shared and had sung them. He awoke a sympathy for them in
many a heart that otherwise would never have known it. In looking up
to him, the Scottish people have seen an impersonation of themselves
on a large scale--of themselves, both in their virtues and in their
vices.

Secondly, Burns in his poetry was not only the interpreter of
Scotland's peasantry, he was the restorer of her nationality. When he
appeared, the spirit of Scotland was at a low ebb. The fatigue that
followed a century of religious strife, the extinction of her
parliament, the stern suppression of the Jacobite risings, the removal
of all symbols of her royalty and nationality, had all but quenched
the ancient spirit. Englishmen despised Scotchmen, and Scotchmen
seemed ashamed of themselves and of their country. A