r pieces. The same
tendency to borrow a hint, to work on some one else's foundation, is
notable in Burns from first to last, in the period of song-writing as
well as in that of the early poems; and strikes one oddly in a man of
such deep originality, who left so strong a print on all he touched, and
whose work is so greatly distinguished by that character of
"inevitability" which Wordsworth denied to Goethe.

When we remember Burns's obligations to his predecessors, we must never
forget his immense advances on them. They had already "discovered"
nature; but Burns discovered poetry--a higher and more intense way of
thinking of the things that go to make up nature, a higher and more
ideal key of words in which to speak of them. Ramsay and Fergusson
excelled at making a popular--or shall we say vulgar?--sort of society
verses, comical and prosaic, written, you would say, in taverns while a
supper-party waited for its laureate's word; but on the appearance of
Burns, this coarse and laughing literature was touched to finer issues,
and learned gravity of thought and natural pathos.

What he had gained from his predecessors was a direct, speaking style,
and to walk on his own feet instead of on academical stilts. There was
never a man of letters with more absolute command of his means; and we
may say of him, without excess, that his style was his slave. Hence that
energy of epithet, so concise and telling, that a foreigner is tempted
to explain it by some special richness or aptitude in the dialect he
wrote. Hence that Homeric justice and completeness of description which
gives us the very physiognomy of nature, in body and detail, as nature
is. Hence, too, the unbroken literary quality of his best pieces, which
keeps him from any slip into the weariful trade of word-painting, and
presents everything, as everything should be presented by the art of
words, in a clear, continuous medium of thought. Principal Shairp, for
instance, gives us a paraphrase of one tough verse of the original; and
for those who know the Greek poets only by paraphrase, this has the very
quality they are accustomed to look for and admire in Greek. The
contemporaries of Burns were surprised that he should visit so many
celebrated mountains and waterfalls, and not seize the opportunity to
make a poem. Indeed, it is not for those who have a true command of the
art of words, but for peddling, professional amateurs, that these
pointed occasions are most usef