2. His Poetry. His sole poetical work of any magnitude is his volume of Poems (1786), which he edited five times during his lifetime, with numerous additions and corrections on each occasion. At different times he contributed to The Scots Musical Museum and to Thomson’s Select Scottish Melodies. After the poet’s death his literary editor, Dr. Currie, published (1800) a large number of additional pieces, along with a considerable amount of correspondence.
We have thus one tale, Tam o’ Shanter, which was included in the third edition of the poems, that of 1793; one longish descriptive piece, The Cotter’s Saturday Night; more than two hundred songs, ranging in quality from very good to middling; and a great number of short epistles, epigrams, elegies, and other types of miscellaneous verse.
3. Features of his Poetry. The poetry is of such a miscellaneous character, and its composition was often so haphazard in the matter of time, that it is almost impossible to give a detailed chronology of it. We shall therefore take it in the mass, and attempt the difficult task of giving an analysis of its various features.
(a) The best work of Burns was almost entirely lyrical in motive. He is one of the rare examples, like Shelley, of the born singer who can give to human emotion a precious and imperishable utterance. He was essentially the inspired egoist: what interested him was vivid and quickening; what lay outside his knowledge and experience was without life or flavor. He thought of reviving the Scottish drama, but, even if he had entered on the project, it is doubtful if he would have succeeded, for he lacked the faculty of putting himself completely in another man’s place. His narrative gift, as it is revealed in Tam o’ Shanter, becomes fused with the heat of some lyrical emotion (in this case that of drunken jollity), and then it shines with a clear flame. But with the departure of the lyrical emotion the narrative impulse ends as well.
(b) While keeping within the limits of the lyric he traverses an immense range of emotion and experience. The feelings he describes are those of the Scottish peasant, but the genius of the poet makes them germane to every member of the human race; he discovers the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. Here we have the “passion and apathy, and glory and shame” that are the inspiration of the lyrical poet, and we have them in rich abundance.
(c) His humor and pathos are as copious and varied as his subject-matter. His wit can be rollicking to coarseness, as it is in The Jolly Beggars; and there are no poems richer in bacchanalian flavor than Willie brewed a Peck o’ Maut and Tam o’ Shanter. He can run to the other extreme of emotion, and be graceful and sentimental, as in Afton Water and My Luve is like a Red, Red Rose. We have beautiful homely songs in John Anderson, my Jo and O’ a’ the Airts; and he can be bitter and scornful in such poems as The Unco Guid and The Holy Fair. His pathos ranges from the piercing cry of Ae Fond Kiss, through the pensive pessimism of Ye Banks and Braes, to the tempered melancholy of My Heart’s in the Hielands. The facility of this precious lyrical gift became a positive weakness, for he wrote too freely, and much of his songwriting is of mediocre quality.
We give brief extracts to illustrate these features of his poetry. The first shows him in his mood of vinous elation; in the second he is acutely depressed and almost maudlin; the third for pure loveliness is almost unexcelled.
(1) O, Willie brewed a peck o’ maut,
And Rob and Allan cam’ to see;
Three blither hearts, that lee-lang night,