he was carrying on an extensive literary correspondence, which was
virtually a competition in essay-writing. He kept copies of the letters
he liked best, and was flattered to find that he was superior to his
correspondents. He studied the essayists of Queen Anne's time, and
formed his style upon theirs, and that of their most distinguished
followers. Steele, Addison, Swift, Sterne, and Mackenzie were his
models. He liked their rounded sentences, and caught their conventional
phrases. He found delight in imitating them. He volunteered his services
with the pen on behalf of his fellow-swains. He became the "Complete
Letter-Writer" of his parish, and was proud of his function and his
faculty. He was aware of his "abilities at a billet-doux." To the very
last he had a high opinion of himself as a writer of letters. He speaks
of one letter being in his "very best manner;" and of waiting for an
hour of inspiration to write another that should be as good. He retained
copies of about thirty of his longer letters, and had them bound for
preservation.

The most serious, almost the only charge brought against the prose style
of Burns is the charge of affectation more or less occasional. All the
earlier critics make it or imply it, and with such an apparent show of
proof that it has generally been believed. Later critics, while unable
to deny the feature of his style which so looks like affectation, have
explained it to such good effect as to make it appear a beauty; they
have asked us to regard it as the happy result of a sympathetic mind
adapting itself to the object of its address. This looks very like
blaming Burns's correspondents for the badness of his style. There is
some truth in the explanation, putting it even so extremely. But when
this allowance is made, there still remains a wide and well-marked
difference between his use of English prose and his mastery of Scottish
verse. The latter is complete--it is the mastery of an originator of