SOURCE: "Burns: A Mouse and a Louse," in The Powers of Poetry, Oxford University Press, Inc., 1960, pp. 74-81.

A Scottish-born writer and critic, Highet was a classical scholar and distinguished educator. His important studies Juvenal the Satirist (1954) and The Anatomy of Satire (1962) were scholarly works that received wide recognition in the literary community. Below, Highet examines Burns's use of Scottish dialect and meter in his odes "To a Mouse" and "To a Louse."

Two of the most sympathetic poems in our language are about vermin. One is about a mouse; the other is about a louse. They are in the same pattern of meter, run to approximately the same size, and were written by the same author. In their own tiny way they are masterpieces of wit and charm. I think the poem about the little mouse might just conceivably have been composed by several other poets, but...