SOURCE: "The Sonsie Muse: The Satiric Use of Neoclassical Diction in the Poems of Robert Fergusson," in Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. XIX, 1984, pp. 165-76.

In the following excerpt, O'Brien discusses Fergusson's satirical use of neoclassical conventions in his pastoral verse.

Modern criticism of Scots literature has provided us with many fine studies on the poetry of Robert Fergusson. Among the revelations disclosed, the influence of Fergusson's Scots poems on the imagination of Robert Burns is of great significance. We know now with certainly that Burns's discovery of Fergusson's poems toward the latter part of 1784 marked the turning point in the development of his poetic sensibility from the neoclassical and sentimental strains of the eighteenth century to the forms and subjects of his native Scots. By the spring of 1785 the influence of Fergusson can be clearly felt in Burns's work, and the intensity of his creative development during...