agination.

The real Ettrick Shepherd was better than the _Noctes_ can make him.
Lockhart gives a delightful account of his first visit to Walter Scott
in Castle Street--his first visit, mind you. He is shown into the
drawing-room and finds Mrs. Scott, disposed, _a la_ Madame Recamier,
on a sofa. His acuteness comes to the aid of his bewilderment, and he
is quick to extend himself in similar fashion upon the opposite sofa.
In the dining-room he was much more at his ease. Before the end of the
meal he had his host as "Wattie" and his hostess as "Charlotte." Next
day he wrote to Scott to ask what he might have said, and to offer
apologies if needful.

A remark put into his mouth by North, that he could "ban" Burns for
having forestalled him with the line--

The summer to Nature, my Willie to me!

set me wondering wherein consists the true lyrical magic. In that line
of Burns's, clearly, it lies in the harmony of lyric thought and lyric
lilt. In--

Come away, come away, Death,

it is in the lilt alone. One thing only about it is sure, and that is
that the diction must be conversational. There will be tears in the
voice, but the voice must be that of the homely earth, never of the
stage, never of the pulpit If you agree with that, you will have to
cut out practically all the poets from Dryden to Cowper, Gray and
Collins among them; for Gray has a learned sock, and hardly allows
familiarity when he is elegising Horace Walpole's cat. But Shakespeare
proves it, Ben Jonson proves it, and all the good poets from
Wordsworth. Burns had the vernacular to help him, and for the most
part a model to steer by. All Lowland Scots, lads and lassies, wail,
and occasionally howl, in his songs. The first two lines of that one
envied by Hogg run:

Here awa, there awa, wandering Willie,
Here awa, there awa, haud awa hame!

and of these the second is traditional, altered only in one word.
Burns writes "haud awa hame" instead of repeating "here awa"--and
improves it. Shakespeare used the King's English, but never shirked a
racy idiom. Here is a good instance from the Sonnets, and from one of
the greatest of them, "Farewell, thou art too dear."

Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter--
In sleep a king; but waking _no such matter_.

You might call that a slang phrase and be right.

There are other cases, and many; some where he goes all lengths, and
one at least where he goes beyond them. But to leave Shakespeare,