He tries to be a good father; he boasts himself a libertine. Sick, sad,
and jaded, he can refuse no occasion of temporary pleasure, no
opportunity to shine; and he who had once refused the invitations of
lords and ladies is now whistled to the inn by any curious stranger. His
death (July 21, 1796), in his thirty-seventh year, was indeed a kindly
dispensation. It is the fashion to say he died of drink; many a man has
drunk more and yet lived with reputation, and reached a good age. That
drink and debauchery helped to destroy his constitution, and were the
means of his unconscious suicide, is doubtless true; but he had failed
in life, had lost his power of work, and was already married to the
poor, unworthy, patient Jean, before he had shown his inclination to
convivial nights, or at least before that inclination had become
dangerous either to his health or his self-respect. He had trifled with
life, and must pay the penalty. He had chosen to be Don Juan, he had
grasped at temporary pleasures, and substantial happiness and solid
industry had passed him by. He died of being Robert Burns, and there is
no levity in such a statement of the case; for shall we not, one and
all, deserve a similar epitaph? WORKS

The somewhat cruel necessity which has lain upon me throughout this
paper only to touch upon those points in the life of Burns where
correction or amplification seemed desirable, leaves me little
opportunity to speak of the works which have made his name so famous. Yet, even here, a few observations seem necessary. At the time when the poet made his appearance and great first success,
his work was remarkable in two ways. For, first, in an age when poetry
had become abstract and conventional, instead of continuing to deal with
shepherds, thunderstorms, and personifications, he dealt with the actual
circumstances of his life, however matter-of-fact and sordid these might
be. And, second, in a time when English versification was particularly
stiff, lame, and feeble, and words were used with ultra-academical
timidity, he wrote verses that were easy, racy, graphic, and forcible,
and used language with absolute tact and courage as it seemed most fit
to give a clear impression. If you take even those English authors whom
we know Burns to have most admired and studied, you will see at once
that he owed them nothing but a warning. Take Shenstone, for instance,
and watch that elegant author as he tries to grapple with the facts of
life. He has a description, I remember, of a gentleman engaged in
sliding or walking on thin ice, which is a little miracle of
incompetence. You see my memory fails me, and I positively cannot
recollect whether his hero was sliding or walking; as though a writer
should describe a skirmish, and the reader, at the end, be still
uncertain whether it were a charge of cavalry or a slow and stubborn
advance of foot. There could be no such ambiguity in Burns; his work is
at the opposite pole from such indefinite and stammering performances;
and a whole lifetime passed in the study of Shenstone would only lead a
man further and further from writing the "Address to a Louse." Yet
Burns, like most great artists, proceeded from a school and continued a
tradition; only the school and tradition were Scottish, and not English. While the English language was becoming daily more pedantic and
inflexible, and English letters more colourless and slack, there was
another dialect in the sister country, and a different school of poetry,
tracing its descent, through King James I., from Chaucer. The dialect
alone accounts for much; for it was then written colloquially, which
kept it fresh and supple; and, although not shaped for heroic flights,
it was a direct and vivid medium for all that had to do with social
life. Hence, whenever Scottish poets left their laborious imitations of
bad English verses, and fell back on their own dialect, their style
would kindle, and they would write of their convivial and somewhat gross
existences with pith and point. In Ramsay, and far more in the poor lad
Fergusson, there was mettle, humour, literary courage, and a power of
saying what they wished to say definitely and brightly, which in the
latter case should have justified great anticipations. Had Burns died at
the same age as Fergusson, he would have left us literally nothing worth
remark. To Ramsay and to Fergusson, then, he was indebted in a very
uncommon degree, not only following their tradition and using their
measures, but directly and avowedly imitating their 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.