But
as we know him, from his recorded utterances, and after nearly one
century, and its diligence of collections, songs, letters, anecdotes,
presenting the figure of the canny Scotchman in a fullness and detail
wonderfully complete, and the lines mainly by his own hand, he forms
to-day, in some respects, the most interesting personality among
singers. Then there are many things in Burns's poems and character
that specially endear him to America. He was essentially a
Republican--would have been at home in the Western United States,
and probably become eminent there. He was an average sample of the
good-natured, warm-blooded, proud-spirited, amative, alimentive,
convivial, young and early-middle-aged man of the decent-born middle
classes everywhere and any how. Without the race of which he is a
distinct specimen, (and perhaps his poems) America and her powerful
Democracy could not exist to-day--could not project with unparallel'd
historic sway into the future.
Perhaps the peculiar coloring of the era of Burns needs always first
to be consider'd. It included the times of the '76-'83 Revolution
in America, of the French Revolution, and an unparallel'd chaos
development in Europe and elsewhere. In every department, shining
and strange names, like stars, some rising, some in meridian, some
declining--Voltaire, Franklin, Washington, Kant, Goethe, Fulton,
Napoleon, mark the era. And while so much, and of grandest moment, fit
for the trumpet of the world's fame, was being transacted--that little
tragi-comedy of R.
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