effect, the amusement of a man who could do nothing better in
literature! The world has agreed that they are the best things Burns has
done; and rates him for their sake in the highest rank of its poets. The
truth is that Burns came to Ellisland with numerous schemes of future
poetical work, vigorous hopes of carrying some of them, and an
inspiration and faculty of utterance unimpaired. It was in Dumfriesshire
that he composed the most tenderly and melodiously seraphic of his
lyrics--"To Mary in Heaven" and "Highland Mary;" the most powerful and
popular of his narrative poems--"Tam O' Shanter;" the first of all
patriotic odes--"Bruce's Address to his Army"; and the noblest manifesto
of the rights and hopes of manhood--"A Man's a Man for a' that."

With one word on his style as a prose-writer this short paper must
close. The most diverse opinions have been uttered on the subject. The
critics trip up each other with charming independency. To Jeffrey they
seemed to be "all composed as exercises and for display." Carlyle
declared that they were written "for the most part with singular force
and even gracefulness," and that when Burns wrote "to trusted friends on
real interests, his style became simple, vigorous, expressive, sometimes
even beautiful." Dr. Waddell prefers him to Cowper and Byron as a
letter-writer. Scott, while allowing passages of great eloquence, found
in the letters "strong marks of affectation, with a tincture of
pedantry." Taine thinks "Burns brought ridicule on himself by imitating
the men of the academy and the court." Lockhart thought, with Walker,
that "he accommodated his style to the tastes" of his correspondents.
And so on.

It is worth while to learn from Burns himself what he thought of his
talent for prose-composition. And in the first place it is to be noted
that he practised prose-composition before he took to poetry. At sixteen