Burns wrote in Scotch, and in celebrating the anniversary of his birth, they celebrated a national fête. His poetry reminds them that they belong to a nation perfectly distinct from England, a nation having a literature of her own. This is why his memory is revered by high and low alike. The Scotch could no more part with their Burns than England with Shakespeare, or Italy with Dante. The Gaelic tongue is rapidly dying out, Scotch customs become more and more English every day, but each year only adds to the glory of Robert Burns. His poems have run rapidly through many editions—they have reached more than a hundred up to now—the sad story of his life is retold every year, and his portrait is still in great demand. The popularity Burns still enjoys in Scotland may be judged from the fact than in one single shop in Edinburgh there are twenty thousand portraits of the poet sold annually.
Whilst the English allow the house which Carlyle inhabited for so many years at Chelsea to go to ruins, the Scotch take a pride in showing the stranger the little clay cottage where Burns first saw the light on the 25th of January, 1759.
It is with real regret that I turn from the subject of the "Ayrshire Ploughman," his life and his works. Few poets have united as he has, delicate pathos and comic force, pure rêverie and the sense of the grotesque. But after all, I should but do what has been done over and over again by his numerous biographers, the chief of whom are Carlyle, Chambers, and Professor Shairp.
Longfellow has said that what Jasmin, the author of the The Blind Girl of Castel Cuillé, was to the south of France, Burns was to the south of Scotland: the representative of the heart of the people.
Nothing can be more suave, piquant, and picturesque than the wild and primitive melodies of the songs of Scotland. The Scotch ballad is the spontaneous production of the touching and simple genius of the nation.
The words are full of pathos and rustic humour. The music is light, often plaintive, always graceful. The whole has a delicious perfume of the mountain. I know of no other kind of song to compare with it, unless it were perhaps the songs of the Tyrol and a few Breton ballads.
The verses of Burns and other Scotch poets have inspired some of the greatest musicians. Mendelssohn was a great admirer of them.
Madame Patti delights to charm her audiences with "Comin' thro' the rye," or "Within a mile o' Edinbro' town," and these vocal gems suit the supple voice of the inimitable songstress; they even suit her very person, as she sings them in her arch manner, and finishes up with a saucy little curtsey.
The songs of Scotland, old as they are most of them, have lost nothing of their freshness. They are still the delight of the nation.[E]