, 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 Scotch 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.
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