Lords, ladies, men of letters, all with manners highly polished by attrition, found in him a barbarian who was not barbarous. As the poet met in at least one lord feelings as natural as those of a plowman, so they met in a plowman manners worthy of a lord.
Dugald Stewart writes: “His manner was easy and unperplexed; his address was perfectly well-bred and elegant in its simplicity; he felt neither eclipsed by the titled nor embarrassed before the learned and eloquent, but took his station with the ease of one born to it.”
Each poet had a brief political career. As exciseman for several years it was necessary for Burns to ride over two hundred miles per week, thus coming constantly in contact with the people. In this public service he made a record for being thorough, correct and at the same time humane.
Byron made as serious an effort in politics as was possible to his impetuous and headlong nature. After many hindrances he was granted a seat in the House of Lords. He traveled awhile, and, returning, made two or three speeches before the House. Between times he would correct the proof-sheets of “Childe Harold.” The publication of this poem put an end to his parliamentary ambitions. “When ‘Childe Harold’ was published,” he says, “no one ever afterward thought of my prose, nor indeed did I.” However, he also says, “I would not for the world be like my hero.”
Each spent much time alone with Nature, drinking from the exhaustless fountain of her varied life. Each loved her most in her wildest, fiercest moods. Power—they loved it, worshiped it; they felt it in them and all around them. It was the necessary food for their strenuous, tempest-tossed souls. Burns loved to walk on the sheltered side of a forest and listen to a storm rave among the trees. Better still, he loved to ascend some eminence and stride along its summit amid the flashes of the lightning and howls of the tempest: “Rapt in enthusiasm, I seemed to ascend to Him who walks on the wings of the wind.” Byron
Made him friends of mountains, stars; But the Quick Spirit of the universe
spoke to him best through Nature’s most stupendous form, the turbulent, merciless ocean.
Byron reveled in the glories of more climes; Burns saw the marvels of more kingdoms, for he understood the language of the daisy and the mouse. The self-negating love, the exultant pride the Peasant Poet felt for his own bonnie Scotland, the English Peer lavished upon a foreign land. Burns said if he ever reached heaven, he would ask nothing better than just a Highland welcome.
Burns, in his innate appreciation of the dignity of humanity, is something of a Siegfried, with the fearless spirit of the forest vocal with the song of birds, the aroma of blossoming shrubs, the play of the waterfall and the restful stretch of meadows with their daisies and heather.
Byron, in the desolation of his youth, in his extremes of laughter and tears, in his yearning for sympathy, in his broodings over the mysteries of life, played the character of Hamlet with the world for a stage, leaving a kindred problem for the wonder of mankind.