re; and
his manner of rendering what he sees is to match. But we must note, at
the same time, his great difference from Chaucer. The freedom of
Chaucer is heightened, in Burns, by a fiery, reckless energy; the
benignity of Chaucer deepens, in Burns, into an overwhelming sense of
the pathos of things;--of the pathos of human nature, the pathos, also,
of non-human nature. Instead of the fluidity of Chaucer's manner, the
manner of Burns has spring, boundless swiftness. Burns is by far the
greater force, though he has perhaps less charm. The world of Chaucer
is fairer, richer, more significant than that of Burns; but when the
largeness and freedom of Burns get full sweep, as in _Tam o' Shanter_,
or still more in that puissant and splendid production, _The Jolly
Beggars_, his world may be what it will, his poetic genius triumphs
over it. In the world of _The Jolly Beggars_ there is more than
hideousness and squalor, there is bestiality; yet the piece is a superb
poetic success. It has a breadth, truth, and power which make the
famous scene in Auerbach's Cellar, of Goethe's _Faust_, seem artificial
and tame beside it, and which are only matched by Shakespeare and
Aristophanes.

Here, where his largeness and freedom serve him so admirably, and also
in those poems and songs where to shrewdness he adds infinite archness
and wit, and to benignity infinite pathos, where his manner is
flawless, and a perfect poetic whole is the result,--in things like the
address to the mouse whose home he had ruined, in things like _Duncan
Gray, Tam Glen, Whistle and I'll come to you my Lad, Auld Lang Syne_
(this list might be made much longer),--here we have the genuine Burns,
of whom the real estimate must be high indeed. Not a classic, nor with
the excellent _spoudaiotes_ of the great classics, nor with a verse
rising to a criticism of life and a virtue like theirs; but a poet with
thorough truth of substance and an answering truth of style, giving us
a poetry sound to the core. We all of us have a leaning towards the
pathetic, and may be inclined perhaps to prize Burns most for his
touches of piercing, sometimes almost intolerable, pathos; for verse
like--

'We twa hae paidl't i' the burn
From mornin' sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin auld lang syne . . .'

where he is as lovely as he is sound. But perhaps it is by the
perfection of soundness of his lighter and archer masterpieces that he
is po