Ferguson (to Miss Taylor): Very striking poems those, don’t you think, Miss Taylor?
Miss Taylor: Poetry is a pagan art, Mr. Ferguson.
Ferguson: But such fervour is refreshing.
Miss Taylor: Very irregular.
[Burns has moved up to Ferguson, and is studying the Bunbury print on the wall.]
Blacklock: That young man has the pure flame of genius in him.
Mrs. Montgomery: A little disconcerting, doctor. We have to remember society, you know.
Blacklock: Society may be trusted with its own preservation, Mrs. Montgomery, but Scotland has never heard songs the like of that before. We must cherish them.
Burns: There is a sublime pathos in that. (Reading from the print.) ‘The child of misery baptised in tears.’ Whose words are those?
Ferguson: I do not remember. Dr. Blacklock, perhaps—Doctor, ‘The child of misery baptised in tears’—do you recall the author?