made him the great songster of the world, and
on their practical side drove him to ruin! The first word which Burns
composed was a song in praise of his partner on the harvest-rig; the
last utterance he breathed in verse was also a song--a faint
remembrance of some former affection. Between these two he composed
from two to three hundred. It might be wished perhaps that he had
written fewer, especially fewer love songs; never composed under
pressure, and only when his heart was so full he could not help
singing. This is the condition on which alone the highest order of
songs is born. Probably from thirty to forty songs of Burns could be
named which come up to this highest standard. No other Scottish
song-writer could show above four or five of the same quality. Of his
songs one main characteristic is that their subjects, the substance
they lay hold of, belongs to what is most permanent in humanity, those
primary affections, those permanent relations of life which cannot
change while man's nature is what it is. In this they are wholly
unlike those songs which seize on the changing aspects of society. As
the phases of social life change, these are forgotten. But no time can
superannuate the subjects which Burns has sung; they are rooted in the
primary strata, which are steadfast. Then as the subjects are primary,
so the feeling with which Burns regards them is primary too--that is,
he gives us the first spontaneous gush--the first throb of his heart,
and that a most strong, simple, manly heart. The feeling is not turned
over in the reflective faculty, and there artistically shaped,--not
subtilized and refined away till it has lost its power and freshness;
but given at first hand, as it comes warm from within. When he is (p. 205)
at his best you seem to hear the whole song warbling through his
spirit, naturally as a bird's. The whole subject is wrapped in an
element of music, till it is penetrated and transfigured by it. No one
else has so much of the native lilt in him. When his mind was at the
white heat, it is wonderful how quickly he struck off some of his most
perfect songs. And yet he could, when it was required, go back upon
them, and retouch them line by line, as we saw him doing in _Ye Banks
and Braes_. In the best of them the outward form is as perfect as the
inward music is all-pervading, and the two are in complete harmony.

To mention a few instances in which he has given their ultimate and
consummate express