Never indeed was there truer utterance in a certain range of
idiosyncrasy than by this poet. Hardly a piece of his, large or
small, but has "snap" and raciness. He puts in cantering rhyme
(often doggerel) much cutting irony and idiomatic ear-cuffing of
the kirk-deacons--drilygood-natured addresses to his cronies, (he
certainly would not stop us if he were here this moment, from classing
that "to the De'il" among them)--"to Mailie and her Lambs," "to auld
Mare Maggie," "to a Mouse,"
"Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie:"
"to a Mountain Daisy," "to a Haggis," "to a Louse," "to the
Toothache," &c.--and occasionally to his brother bards and lady or
gentleman patrons, often with strokes of tenderest sensibility,
idiopathic humor, and genuine poetic imagination--still oftener with
shrewd, original, sheeny, steel-flashes of wit, home-spun sense,
or lance-blade puncturing. Then, strangely, the basis of Burns's
character, with all its fun and manliness, was hypochondria, the
blues, palpable enough in "Despondency," "Man was made to Mourn,"
"Address to Ruin," a "Bard's Epitaph," &c. From such deep-down
elements sprout up, in very contrast and paradox, those riant
utterances of which a superficial reading will not detect the hidden
foundation. Yet nothing is clearer to me than the black and desperate
background behind those pieces--as I shall now specify them. I find
his most characteristic, Nature's masterly touch and luxuriant
life-blood, color and heat, not in "Tam O'Shanter," "the Cotter's
Saturday Night," "Scots wha hae," "Highland Mary," "the Twa Dogs,"
and the like, but in "the Jolly Beggars," "Rigs of Barley," "Scotch
Drink," "the Epistle to John Rankine," "Holy Willie's Prayer," and in
"Halloween," (to say nothing of a certain cluster, known still to a
small inner circle in Scotland, but, for good reasons, not published
anywhere.
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